


These Things Take Time

by Scale_Shark



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Blood, Blood and Violence, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Civil War doesn't happen, Depressed Steve Rogers, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Happy Ending, Hurt Bucky Barnes, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mentions of Suicidal Thoughts, Mild Language, POV Bucky Barnes, POV Steve Rogers, Panic Attacks, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Protective Steve Rogers, depictions of torture, it's not really gory but it's there, one civil war spoiler, recovery fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-27
Updated: 2018-10-26
Packaged: 2019-01-06 05:49:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 29,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12205131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scale_Shark/pseuds/Scale_Shark
Summary: Weeks after the helicarriers go down in the Potomac, Bucky Barnes breaks into Steve's apartment sick and injured. As Steve tries to help Bucky and Bucky tries to figure out who he's supposed to be, they both have to confront everything that's happened to them, and they can't do it alone.





	1. Chapter 1

The Winter Soldier walks out of the river, dropping a heavy mass on the bank. He looks back over it, over him, the man from the bridge. A numbness has settled over him like a thick set of scales and it’s only later that he considers maybe he should have done cpr or tried getting water out of Steve’s lungs.

Is it really _the_ Steve, his Steve? No, that was someone else’s Steve, and nothing of his belongs to the Winter Soldier anymore.

_._

_He remembers lying on a table, wires stringing from nodes on his body. His hair isn’t falling into his eyes yet. They want him to stop calling out, to think there’s no hope, but Bucky knows Steve will always come back for him._

_His throat is raw, “Steve…” barely coming out in a whisper. He knows he has to hold on to it so he can hold on for Steve. This is a game he’s played before._

_A sudden onset of electricity courses through his body, his muscles straining of their own accord against the straps holding him down. His throat burns and his jaw aches with abuse._

_When it finally stops the first few moments of exhaustion and nausea are so strong he misses what’s being said to him._

_His lips form a question, but no sound comes out.  His head lolls to the side and through half-closed eyelids he sees a man in a white coat yelling at him. This one’s been around a lot lately._

_“Captain America is dead!”_

_The accent sounds familiar.  There’s something in his voice that mocks the name, as if he’s rubbing it in dirt._

_“He gave up on you; he’s not coming. Even Captain America can’t come back from the dead,” the scientist says._

_“No, he’d never…” Bucky’s not sure the words actually come out of his mouth. Steve would be out there right now looking for him; he would never abandon Bucky. Unless he was completely sure Bucky was dead. The thought is bitter and he wanted to spit it out. How could he have so little faith in Steve?_

_And yet, Bucky didn’t think he was going to survive that fall. Even when he was being dragged out of the snow, marveled at by people who clearly didn’t think he could survive that fall either, he thought it was just a dream of the afterlife. He couldn’t feel anything, everything numb, and he thought if this is death, at least it’s not painful._

_It’s possible he fell asleep,  because the man in the coat is standing over him shouting  and Bucky doesn’t remember him coming over to the table._

_He thrusts a paper into Bucky’s face, blurry lines of words that he can’t make out. Then as if putting on a pair of glasses, everything comes into focus._

_PLANE DID NOT REACH NEW YORK STOP CAPTAIN AMERICA DEAD STOP LOCATION OCEAN UNKNOWN STOP TESSERACT LOST STOP_

_A plane crash?_

_“No,” he croaks._

_What the hell was he doing here when Steve was dead in the water?_

_“No.”_

_He never had a chance. Steve-_

_“Fuck you!” he shouts without realizing he still has the ability to scream. “Fuck you you fucking son of a-”_

_The electricity comes back, stabbing every muscle, every nerve. He blacks out for what he thinks must have just been a few minutes and the man controlling the shocks has his hand pressed down on Bucky’s chest._

_“Will you admit it now?” he asks._

_Bucky licks dry lips and spits toward him though it doesn’t do much but dribble off his chin._

_“Very well.” He rubs his hand across Bucky’s chest and leaves his sight._

_Time is a touchy thing and it passes Bucky in waves, in the waking moments when they try to talk to him. He can’t be sure how long it goes on, the pain and blackness, the echoes of words in between. Sometimes he doesn’t hear anyone talk to him before they start in again._

_Steve is gone. Steve was supposed to come for him, to take him home when they won the war. Steve was supposed to go back to the States, get a house, find himself a family. He deserved that and now it wasn’t even a possibility._

_The next time he comes back to consciousness, the weight of his own body feels like it’s too much to bear even with the support from the table. He tries to move his arms, but only the fingers of his right hand twitch a little. He becomes aware of a familiar hand pressing into his skin. Bucky’s body is burning, his insides are all pulsing heat, but his skin remains dry._

_“Are we done now?” the man asks him._

_Bucky’s head rolls to the left, missing the gaze pressing on him and instead finds himself staring at yellowed bandages._

_“Hmm?” the man prods._

_Nothing comes out of Bucky. What’s left?_

_Apparently no response is good enough, because the man pats his chest and says, “Good.” The voice is smoother than Bucky thinks his voice will ever be again._

_The nodes are removed from his body and he’s left alone on the table. Later, when he lets go of Steven Grant Rogers, some of James Buchanan Barnes goes with him._

_._

The asset makes it to rendezvous, but there’s no handlers to pick him up. It takes a moment to remember that they must all be distracted by the helicarriers. His arm throbs and he thinks it might be dislocated.

In the situation where he gets separated, the asset is programmed to go to a safe house, so that’s what he does. He’ll wait. They’ll fix his arm. He’ll forget. They’ll put him back in...he doesn’t want to think about it so he shuts down and lets his legs work on automatic. There’s no one at the safe house either. In fact, the whole place looks ripped to shreds, as if someone grabbed everything they could carry and left the rest to disarray.

He sits down on the floor, resting his back against the wall. His clothes are still soaking wet, but it’s nothing he can take care of right now so he shoves that away too.

_He remembers sitting on the edge of a bed and feeding broth to Steve. No, that’s not quite right. James Barnes fed Steve when he was sick. Steve was so little then…_

His skin becomes chafed and it stings through his clothes and still no one comes. He uses gravity to roll his right arm back into place. If he can wait just a while longer, the tissue surrounding it should start to heal. A few hours later he has a narrow range of movement and knows it’s time to move. He’s still not sure what he’s going to do, but he does know that Hydra will come back to destroy the rest of this place. Until he decides, he needs to leave.

He steals a sweatshirt and a hat from a market stall when the owner goes inside a neighboring store. The sweatshirt is a brighter color than he would have liked and says I HEART D.C., but he supposes he’ll look like a tourist. He picks pockets, scraping enough together to pay for a motel room barely big enough for a bed, a lamp, and a tiny t.v. He feels guilty for stealing so he shuts that off too. This is just business as usual. When he lays on the bed he can feel all the bruises too low priority to heal.

.

_He’s been here before, waiting in a motel room. Plenty of time spent staring through the scope of a rifle across the street...or no, now he’s in an abandoned office building. Construction plastic snaps behind him. He’s looking down at a crowded street through the scope. They’re all waiting for something._

_._

He’s back in the motel room, grounding himself with the pain of his beaten body. He figures he has two options, leave tomorrow and get as far away as possible, or wait in the motel room until they find him here. Once the fire settles, they’ll want him back. They probably haven’t even realized they’ve lost him yet. If he waits, he wouldn’t have to live like this, live knowing death flows behind him. But they would just use him again, more people would die.

The television has news channels and despite being a better part of a day, they’re still covering the crashes. Somehow a lot of Hydra’s files went public. The anchors comment on ‘trending’ messages from people who have been reading them. He wonders what people are reading about him.

“We’ve just gotten new information about the situation. Captain America was confirmed to be involved in bringing down the ships and has been found on the bank of the river. It’s still unclear what injuries he sustained. He’s in transport to Eastpointe hospital and hopefully we’ll get so-”

Bucky flips the t.v. off. His clothes are dry now, but his skin runs cold. He knows exactly what injuries Captain America sustained. The thought hadn’t come to him earlier, but now he can picture the points of bullet entry, the bones he had intended to break. He goes to sleep seeing Steve’s face as he tells him to end it.

.

When Bucky wakes up, his mind is less clouded and he finds he can process the events of yesterday. There’s something he’s missing. Why is Steve here? How is he here?

He slips out of the motel early in the morning, leaving his key in the lock of the door. There’s a newspaper folded down into a trash can under a plastic wrapper, half an apple, and spilled coffee that soiled the front story. There’s a date at the top. July 18, 2014. 2014, that’s...the scope of his situation starts to swirl around him. He doesn’t know when _they_ started using him as a weapon, or how many times they gave him a mission, but what does that even matter to the soldier’s victims? How many people…

_Your work has been a gift to mankind_

Fuck.

He flips through the rest of the newspaper, but there’s nothing about Steve or the crashes; it must be a few days old. He’s almost done when an ad clipping at the bottom of the sports section catches his eye.

_Come visit the Captain America exhibit at the Smithsonian and get $2.00 off entry_

There’s a picture of Steve from his movies underneath.

Bucky rips the ad out and tosses the rest of the newspaper back with the trash.

Luckily there are signs for the museum everywhere, making it easy to find. He buys a new pair of pants and some gloves, ditching  his old clothes in a dumpster and has just enough money left to buy a ticket with his coupon. The woman working at the desk doesn’t pay any attention to him as she slides the ticket through the hole in the window.

Inside there’s a giant sign that directs him to the Captain America exhibit. In the doorway, it shows how the Serum affected Steve and how he was sent to work in the movies. Tightness fills his chest when he looks at Steve’s ‘before’ picture. He didn’t see what they did to Steve, but he remembers someone telling him about it. The next board is about how Steve went deep into enemy lines and rescued the 107th division from being prisoners of war.

.

_Bucky’s being pulled off another table. Steve’s here. He’s so big and he’s here, now, in the war._

_“Did it hurt?”_

_Little bit._

_“Is it permanent?”_

_So far._

_._

Then there’s a board about Steve going down in the ocean to stop nuclear weapons from being launched. Idiot, why didn’t he at least try to land it somewhere? Bucky didn’t know the crash had been purposeful. He’d been given ‘dead’ and ‘plane crash’ and always he’d assumed something had shot him down or incapacitated him. Now there’s a board about finding Steve a few years ago, frozen in the ice. How 70 years later, the world he woke up to was completely transformed from what he knew.

Bucky hears his name and follows the sound to a matching display. There’s a picture of James Barnes, hair cut short, wearing a different uniform. There’s no scruff on James’ face, no scars you could see, and he looks at ease. James had no idea. He looks at a video of Bucky and Steve and at the Howling Commandos’ uniforms. They feel familiar as if he had read about them in a book, but can’t remember when or which book.

The museum is starting to fill up and the crowd of people moving and chattering starts to make Bucky dizzy. He holds the bridge of his nose when he leaves, attempting to alleviate the throbbing in his head. He gets off the main road and wanders back into statues and old monuments harder to find on a map. The air clears his head until he feels steady again. He needs to stay together; there’s something else he needs to do today.

…..

The hospital is easy to find, but locating Steve proves harder. Bucky knows he can’t just walk up to the front desk and ask for the room number. There’s no chance they’re going to let a man with no ID, who coincidentally looks like a Hydra assassin they may or may not know about by now, see _Captain America._

He leans against a pillar for a while, watching ambulances pull up, and medics roll stretchers through automatic doors.

.

He _remembers a stretcher. He wakes up on it, strapped across his chest and right arm. The stretcher is moving, taking him somewhere, but he can’t be sure where. He can’t even remember how long he’s been here; there’s no windows to count day from night, no clocks to tell time. Someone walking next to the stretcher notices he’s awake and puts a mask over his face. The air smells sweet._

_The next time he wakes up there’s pain, burning, biting pain. His arm hurts more than it did after they dug him out of the snow and helped his blood start flowing again. There’s a sharp tool coming toward him, his scream mixed with the sound of metal cutting through bone and blood. He goes under again._

_When his eyes open a third time his arm doesn’t hurt as it did before. The pain is different, higher up and closer to his neck. He holds up his hands, two of them, one made of plated metal. It’s hard to comprehend what this is, why he can feel it. They cut into me, he thinks, they put something inside me...the thought falls off, he’s lost its trail. A man with a clipboard comes to stand over him. He talks, but Bucky can’t understand what he’s saying. His head pounds a terrible, shaking rhythm and the garbled chatter only serves to make it worse._

_Shut up, he thinks._

_Shut up!_

_Bucky strangles the man with his new metal arm despite the pain that flares up his shoulder and back. Soon a sour taste fills his mouth and he falls unconscious, dropping the man and his clipboard._

.

Bucky’s seen these memories before, but when?

Inside the waiting room is a directory of the hospital. Bucky doesn’t look at the employees sitting at the front desk and they don’t seem to notice anything suspicious about him. He scans the list, pausing on intensive care. Steve might qualify for intensive care if the serum can’t keep ahead of all of the wounds. Bucky knows where he shot Steve, can feel the ghost of a gun in his hand. He knows what damage he intended to inflict and then on top of that, Steve almost drowned. Yeah, he thinks Steve has a pretty good chance of being in intensive care. Memorizing the map is easy and it’s only a little more difficult to match the exterior of the building with the blueprint. Bucky wishes for a rifle sight, but wishes have never worked for him and he swipes a pair of tourist binoculars instead.

He walks the streets surrounding the hospital until the maps click together in his head and he knows intensive care is on this wing. On the roof of an office building opposite the hospital, Bucky looks over the edge and peers at windows through the binoculars. He has to spend longer than he’d like on each window, trying to get the angle just right to catch a glimpse of the occupant. In some cases he has to skip rooms, because the glare is too bright or the blinds are closed. Then a shape catches his eye. The angle is strange, a little sideways, but mostly from the back, blonde hair sticking up from pillows where his chest is being propped. It has to be Steve, the image is too familiar.

The man is still as death, sleeping, Bucky convinces himself. Is that a good or a bad thing? There’s a flicker of movement from the corner, someone else entering the window frame. The man moves closer to the bed, resting a hand on Steve’s arm. It’s the man who flies.

Jealousy heats his features and then it snaps away as if the wind blew it out of him. It’s okay, he thinks, Steve has someone looking out for him, see. It was James Barnes’ job to take care of Steve and now other people have taken up that dead mantle. It’s not _his_ responsibility. It’s not his _place_.

Bucky takes a bus North. At first he went to the airport, thinking that the farther away he could get, the safer everyone would be. But there was armed guard at all entrances, checking ID and Bucky didn’t think fighting his way onto a plane would work well in his favor. He needed documentation.

He rents a room in a house built before the city existed, sharing with two other tenants who, thankfully, keep to themselves. On the news, he learns of Captain America’s recovery, his release from the hospital and return home.

Bucky is climbing the steps to his front door, sweat pooling under the line of his baseball hat. He’s just returned from a job moving boxes onto trucks, paid in cash under the books no ID needed. His left arm twitches as it’s done for several days now. It’s an inconvenience, having to clean up things that slip out of his hand, and while it’s mostly an annoyance, if it gets worse, he’s not sure he’ll be able to keep his job. His right hand pulls his keys out of his apartment, but before he can push them into the lock he hears a scuffle behind him and on reflex he moves the keys into an offensive position in his fingers.

He turns to the right, but the attacker comes from the left, pulling him over the stair rail and onto broken concrete. Bucky twists off the ground, using the attacker’s own body to knock the air out of him. A half second later Bucky has the assailant pinned, yanking his mask off and allowing his head to bounce back against the concrete. It’s not a face he recognizes, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t a Hydra operative.

“Who are you?” he growls, punching the man with his left arm. Something pricks his neck like a mosquito bite, but it’s no insect.

Bucky grabs the second assailant behind him and flips them over his shoulder so they fall next to their partner. He stomps on their hand, smashing glass and bone alike.

“Who are...working…” his last word sounds far away as if it was drifting away from him in a helium balloon. He turns and the world blurs at the edges, appearing to lag.

“What...fuck,” Bucky mumbles, the words slurred and then he’s falling to the ground.

_..._

His eyelids peel open through a thick layer of salt and his eyes roll around until he can make out a pockmarked ceiling. Someone’s pounding on a door, or it’s the throbbing in his head. His nose feels clogged and numb, forcing him to breathe through his mouth. When he rolls his head to the side he sees a man reading a computer screen, light illuminating his face.

Bucky tries to ask where he is, but all that comes out is a groaning whine.

The man looks up startled. Bucky falls asleep before anything can be said.

.

_Bucky? Buck!_

_._

He wakes up to stabbing pains in his limbs like a thousand needles pricking him all at once. He moves to scratch his feet, only to find himself strapped down. Well, this isn’t new, he can’t count how many times he’s been in this position. This time, the computer man is waiting for him to wake up.

“You woke up earlier than expected. That formula’s gotta be some helluva stuff. A normal man might not have woken up at all from a dose that high.”

“Who are ‘oo,” Bucky says. His nose is still blocked and there’s a sticky mess of blood and saliva that’s formed on the roof of his mouth. Trying to swallow it proves useless, resulting in a wave of coughing when air can’t get through his nose.

“Doesn’t matter, you won’t be here permanently,” replies computer man.

“What do ‘oo mean?” Bucky doesn’t want anything to do with whatever this game is, but it’s about time he got some answers. It’s _almost_ a relief he’s been caught, no more looking over his shoulder. Almost.

“Hydra will come for you.”

“Aren’t ‘oo Hydra?’

The man laughs. “As if.  We were hired to do a little job for them. That’s you. Heard you ran away like a coward, they gave us very specific instructions about what to do with you.”

“Where’th Pierthe?” It doesn’t quite sound understandable even to his own ears so he repeats, “Alexthander Pierthe.”

“Pierce? How should I know, I’m not fuckin’ google.” He sighs. “Name sounds familiar, probably dead from the news.”

Pierce is dead. Bucky’s not sure how to feel, so he shoves it to the side for later. The man leaves, giving Bucky precious minutes of silence he uses to think of escape.

The straps holding him down are a thick leather, clearly not build for the Winter Soldier. He thinks he can break them, but even though the drugs are clearly wearing off, his muscles remain mostly useless. Not even his metal arm will respond with more than a twitch. His system will deal with the drugs soon enough and then he needs a plan. From what he can see the room is pretty small, piled with computers and boxes all of which are covered in a blanket of dust and cobwebs. Focus. What could he use as a weapon? Hah, what couldn’t he use as a weapon. Bucky’s pretty sure that all the Winter Soldier training is still in the back of his brain even if he doesn’t remember all the times he trained.

His next thought is finding out where they are. He could be close to where he was staying or they could have flown him out of the country. That doesn’t seem likely though. He can’t feel the press of his knife under his waistband, probably confiscated it as soon as the drugs took hold.

A different man enters the room. He wears a lab coat, but he doesn’t look at Bucky with the same fascination all of the Hydra scientists had.

“Are you gonna let me the fuck outta here?” Bucky asks.

Lab coat guy ignores him, instead injecting a drug through his arm. Bucky thinks they might just put him back to sleep so they won’t have to deal with him, but then the man starts unstrapping him from the table. Bucky almost laughs at the man’s stupidity as he lunges for him, but he barely gets off the table before his head bashes back onto its surface. He can’t move any of his limbs, and even his tongue won’t move properly enough to form words.

The man yanks him off the table and bucky crumples to the floor, hanging from where his arm is being gripped. His handler tries to yank him up, but ends up mostly dragging Bucky from the room.

He can’t remember any drug like this before. On the other hand, the room he gets dragged into feels all too familiar. It’s dimly lit with concrete flooring and gray walls. Yes, he remembers plenty of rooms like this.

The man who greeted him when he first woke up is there now, standing with his hands behind his back all smug like. Bucky’d like to punch him right in his practiced smirk.

“And so it begins, soldier,” he says, voice oily.

Bucky manages to send spittle onto the floor near the man’s shoes, but he gets no reaction other than a flicker in the eyebrows.

.

There’s water first, robbing his body of oxygen. It’s exhausting, mind numbing, but at least they let him sleep after. Eventually he wakes up and can move his body on his own, wincing through damaged lungs. They start beating him anytime he falls asleep or stumbles, forced to walk for days on end, sometimes sprinting on a treadmill. It’s on the fifth day or being awake that he considers begging to go back to the water. They give him food then, when he falls to his knees and won’t get up despite the kicking. He estimates it’s been well over a week without sleep when he finally collapses. He wakes up on the concrete, his almost healed nose broken again.

_._

Bucky can’t be sure how long he’s been in this facility, but he knows it’s too long. Why hasn’t Hydra come for him? From what he knew before he got taken, Hydra operatives were still being arrested, those they could find anyway. If they still haven’t regrouped… Bucky squeezes his eyes tight. A thought goes through his head, maybe the orders are to work him until he dies. No, Hydra has invested too much time and money making their perfect weapon. From the scraps of memory swimming to the surface of his mind, this treatment feels a lot like when they were first trying to break him, erase him until he became a blank slate for them to fill.

Good strategy, he thinks.

.

Bucky sees his chance to escape just when he’s starting to think about letting them turn him into the Winter Soldier again. He’s started dreaming about cryofreeze while awake. They’re making him walk again, the raw sores on his feet merely background noise to the burning stabbing pain in his shoulder. It shudders down his back then flames back up to his neck, making him hot and dizzy. Waves of intense anxiety crash over him stealing his breath. He thinks he might claw his own brain out with his hand that’s still working.

Bucky stumbles and receives an electric shock to the ribs which only making it harder to stand back up and keep steady. It doesn’t help that his body is consuming him from the inside out, anything non-essential to keep him moving through the starvation. It’s enough to keep him alive, but not much for him to run on.

A guard exits, leaving only one to watch after Bucky. He’s never left alone and in this state, he’s not sure he can overpower even one person.

He stumbles once more, falling to his knees under the shock that comes with it. He takes a second to press his forehead to the cool concrete, leaving an imprint of sweat. He uses his right arm to crawl forward and gets two more shocks when he refuses to stand. The second causes Bucky to collapse onto the floor, bumping his sore nose. He’s acting, but not by much. Being supported by the floor is a relief, damn the consequences.

His current jailer comes closer and kicks him. It hurts, but Bucky’s almost numb to it. He tries his hardest to stay limp and let his body take the blunt without tensing. After a few more, the guard gets bored and bends down to look under Bucky’s eyelids.

There’s a moment when Bucky thinks he’s not going to get up. The exhaustion, the pain, it’s too much to handle, but outside is freedom and Steve. When did Bucky start thinking about Steve again?

Bucky swipes the feet out from the guard, throwing himself over him and grabbing the knife strapped to his belt. Honestly, couldn’t they have trusted this guy with a gun? He slices the man’s throat and lets him scrabble as he chokes. All Bucky needs are his shoes.

.

The facility Bucky’s in is like a maze and he can’t see how anyone could ever possibly get where they’re going. Deciding it’s a good bet he’s underground, Bucky climbs the first set of stairs he reaches. His left arm clicks and twitches until, like a switch, he finds he can use it again. He’s out of the stairwell and shuffling down a new corridor when the alarms go off. That’s when shuffling turns into running, the end of his adrenaline reserves spiking to block the pain wracking his body.

He runs into two armed guards, posted in front of a door. One shoots at him and Bucky blocks it with his metal hand before reaching the guard and swinging him around to use as a shield. The second guard has woken up from his moment of shock and shoots at Bucky, but only kills his companion. He drops the first guard, and disarms the other, dropping the gun and using the knife from his jailer to inflict a fatal wound to the stomach. Bucky can feel himself slipping, falling onto the dying man for support. They both tumble to the floor and precious seconds pass before Bucky can remember where he is and what he’s doing. Out. Out. He busts his way through an emergency exit onto a lower roof. Damn, he thinks, why didn’t he grab a gun. There’s no time now. He shuts down and lets the Winter Soldier get him off the roof and away from the building.

Bucky runs until he thinks he might keel over and die for real, serum or no. He’s behind some brick buildings and squeezes between two dumpsters. There’s crates he uses to box himself in, blocking the view of any passerby. It’s night and Bucky thinks that even if they catch him tomorrow, at least he’ll have slept for a full night.

.

He wakes up to the sun and a man in a grease-stained apron yelling at Bucky in a language he doesn’t know. Bucky jumps up, knocking the crates into the man as he takes off. He sees his reflection in a store window, not yet open for the day. His nose is a little swollen and not exactly the same shape he was used to seeing in the mirror. Broken blood vessels create heavy bruises under his eyes. Dirt and sweat covers his bare skin, his hair matted with it, and his clothes are covered in dark stains.

He finds a jacket with a hood, covering most of the staining and his face if he keeps it down. There’s a bag of half eaten fast food in a garbage can. What was left of a burger comes back up in a wet pile, but his stomach manages to hold some french fries.

When Bucky finds out he’s back in Virginia, anxious laughter bursts out of him, sounding wheezy through displaced cartilage. He starts walking toward D.C. his left arm shuddering all the way.

.

Bucky’s body begs him to stop so it can heal, but he _knows_ he needs to get to...Steve. The name curls around him like a warm blanket. His hand tries to wipe sweat from his forehead, but there’s no perspiration, just burning.

Why didn’t Bucky go see Steve in the first place? Because Steve will despise him for what he’s done. He’s not Bucky from before the war, he’s Bucky the Winter Soldier, the Asset. But if Steve would just let him sleep for a few hours, he could leave again.

He remembers this building, remembers the apartment where he last Captain America with his target. The Soldier’s target. The memory is hazy as if someone else told it to him. He didn’t know Steve then. Only the target.

He locates Steve’s window, Captain America’s window.

.

_Captain America pulls him off a table._

_Did it hurt._

_Oh yes, it hurts and hurts, he thinks._

_Is it permanent._

_Bucky hopes not. He wants to know he can die someday._

.

Bucky jumps and splinters through the window, rolling his body when he lands. Stabbing pain shoots through his arm and he thinks he must have cut it on some glass, but then he realizes that’s not possible. The arm in question makes a loud noise and his shoulder jerks involuntarily. He goes around a corner, looking down a hall. There’s someone at the end of the hallway.

 _Target, his target_ , whispers the Soldier.

Bucky takes off, barreling into solid mass and they both go down on the floor. He gets a knee on the target’s chest, but it manages to twist and get enough leverage to throw Bucky back down the hall.

The Winter Soldier is loud in his head, pounding against his skull and making him want to scream.

_Thump thump._

There’s a pull deep in his belly to find Pierce. He didn’t deliver his mission report.

_Thump thump._

Pierce is dead.

_Thump._

Bucky’s hand slides up the wall, steadying himself as he stands.

“Bucky?” It’s Steve’s voice coming down to him. Captain America’s voice.

 _Target_ , the Soldier says.

Bucky’s head snaps up and he crashes down the hall into Steve again. This time when they go down there’s no fight against Bucky. He pins Steve to the ground, a knee digging into his stomach and hands closing around his neck so he knows Bucky could kill him with a steady squeeze. Steve doesn’t move.

A wetness fills Bucky’s vision and blurs the face looking up from below him. He thinks he must be bleeding.

Pain spikes through his head causing a shudder to run through his arm as it dies again. He compensates his grip with one hand, eyes shut, grinding teeth through the wave of pain.

“Buck, what happened to you?” Steve’s voice brings him back down.

“I went to the museum,” he says, “I read about you.” His voice sounds distant to his own ears. Another shudder runs through his arm, but it doesn’t start working again. Useless. Steve’s mouth opens to say something else and Bucky rolls the hand he has left into his throat to quiet him.

“I know it’s not true.” His hand starts shaking so hard he has to release Steve to avoid suffocating him, instead shoving Steve’s shoulder into the ground until he steadies. There’s a whirring sound accompanied by clicking and then Bucky can feel his arm again, but the pain of moving his shoulder is more than he can bear and he lets it fall dead again.

The pain in his head starts to subside. He takes a shallow breath, the deepest he can manage and waits to see if it will come back. His head is stuffy, crowded, loud with pounding and mixed orders.

_Mission report._

_Target._

_Sleep._

“I know they’re fucking with me,” Bucky growls.

“Who?” Steve asks, voice low.

“Hydra.”

Wrinkles form between the furrow of Bucky’s eyebrows. Why did he come here? He wipes snot from his itching nose and a new, familiar smell fills the air.

“If it’s true, James fell off the train, Steve died in the ice, all the people-” His right hand starts shaking again and when he brings it to his face he swears he can see the blood of his victims on it. How many lives were lost under these hands?

He swipes at his nose as the pounding in his head swells again. Bucky lets himself fall off Steve and onto the floor under them, a wall at his back. Exhaustion pours over him until his eyes can’t focus and it’s an effort to keep his head from dipping down to his chest. Something soft and white presses into his hands, toilet paper. He uses it to stop the flow from his nose.

“Can-”

“Bucky, can I clean the blood off of you?”

Blood, Bucky thinks, yes it’s protocol to hose the Soldier after a mission. He pulls himself up and follows Steve to the bathroom, sitting on the edge of the tub. Steve uses a washcloth instead of a hose and works to not put too much pressure on his bruises or jerk his head around. It’s less efficient, but it’s also less painful. He doesn’t deserve the gentleness Steve gives him, he’ll never deserve it. He shoves the thought into the pile with dead Pierce and the year 2014.

The handler is staring at him, no at something on him. Bucky looks down and remembers the dark staining he tried to hide this morning.

He can’t hear what the handler is saying and doesn’t protest when his shirt is maneuvered around his arms and head. It drops to the tiled floor.

The handler leaves so Bucky goes back into the hall, his left arm pulling at his sore shoulder, a dead weight. So much heavier than his right arm.

Pierce comes up to him and gives him an order, but Bucky’s ears are ringing and his eyes won’t read the lips. He allows Pierce to take his arm and guide him to another room, to a bed. He’s asleep before he can find out what the mission is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> .


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The break-in from Steve's perspective

Shattering glass rips Steve from sleep and he throws himself out of bed before he can even process what's happening. He crashes into the doorpost of his bedroom trying to swing around the corner to the short hallway. Something large and very solid slams into him, sending them both to the floor. Streaks of light from a window illuminates the shape of a person. Steve and the intruder grapple together on the scuffed floorboards until Steve gets his feet out and manages to throw the intruder off of him. He rolls over and jumps to his knees, hands up, ready for the next attack. 

The intruder stands up at the end of the hallway, one hand sliding up the wall and head hanging low. Outlined in silhouette, the figure is familiar. Steve saw it last a few weeks ago and before that-

“Bucky?” Steve says, voice loud in the comparative silence of the apartment. His hands fall a little, knowing he won’t hurt Bucky, but not knowing if it’s really him. 

Bucky’s head snaps up and he throws them both to the floor again, but this time Steve doesn’t fight him. A knee digs into Steve’s stomach and fingers push around his throat, restricting the depth of his breathing.

Tears roll down Bucky’s cheeks, one wavering drop hitting his shirt. Steve watches helplessly as Bucky grinds his teeth against a wave of pain, a shudder running down his body that ends violently in his left arm. The arm falls away from Steve’s throat and even though Bucky moves his right hand to better reach Steve’s neck, his grip is noticeably weaker. 

“Buck, what happened to you?”

“I went to the museum,” Bucky says, eyes still squeezed shut. “I read about you.”

Another shudder runs down his friend’s spine. 

Steve tries to ask him something else, but a jab in the throat shuts the words out. 

“I know they’re fucking with me,” Bucky says, voice thick and dark. 

“Who?” Steve asks, letting it go in a shallow breath. 

“Hydra.”

Bucky wipes his nose and blood runs down to the curve of his lip. The smell is strong, coppery, all too familiar to Steve. Bucky starts speaking again, voice rough like he’s trying to keep it from shaking. 

“If it’s true, James fell off the train, Steve died in the ice, all those people-”

Bucky half falls, half rolls off of Steve and into the narrow space between Steve’s legs and the wall. Steve slowly pulls his legs up and shifts away from his friend. He watches a shallow breath leave Bucky’s chest, head hanging. 

Steve shakes the shock off himself and grabs tissue from the bathroom. Bucky gives no indication that he noticed Steve leave or come back and Steve has to press the toilet paper into Bucky’s hand. Bucky’s fingers close around it and Steve pulls back, sitting across the hall with his arms on his knees. It’s a long while before Bucky pulls the tissue away from his face. There’s dried blood on his hands and the space where the tissue was. 

“Can-” Steve tries, pausing. 

“Bucky, can I clean the blood off of you?” 

Bucky stands in answer and even follows Steve into the bathroom. The water takes a minute to warm up. Once it does Steve soaks a washcloth and rings it between his hands. It feels good so he does it again. He feels Bucky move around him and sit down on the tub, like he’s been here a hundred times. 

He takes the soiled tissue out of Bucky’s hand, noticing small dark slivers of old blood mixed with the new crimson. 

Steve starts with the dried blood, resting his free hand on the side of Bucky’s face to steady it, thumb on his cheek, fingers on his neck. Steve can feel the oil coating the hair resting against his fingers. His skin is so hot. 

After blood, Steve cleans off tears from Bucky’s cheeks, dirt and sweat from his forehead. 

Under the piercing bathroom light there’s something  _ other _ about Bucky. His skin is sallow and doesn’t sit quite right on his bones. Steve realizes it’s because he’s lost too much weight in too short a period. The bruising under his eyes is tinted yellow and green, and looks like it’s been healing for some time. Bucky’s nose is a little swollen, bending at a shifted angle. 

Steve sets the washcloth down and considers the rest of his friend. His clothes are stained, the pants with dark, irregular patterns. There’s a more familiar stain of blood on Bucky’s shirt, but he can’t tell if it’s actually Bucky’s or not. He asks Bucky about it, but his eyes are glazed and he doesn’t respond. 

As careful as he can, Steve maneuvers the shirt off of Bucky, sometimes pulling it between his hands until the stitches pop to make a larger hole for an arm. Steve clenches his teeth at the sight of more bruises covering Bucky’s torso all in various stages of healing. A few places even look burned. The skin around Bucky’s left arm is inflamed, swollen and red.

Steve leaves the room in a fury knowing that if he finds more bruises on Bucky he might very well go find and kill the person responsible. But he takes a few breaths and knows he’s not going to leave Bucky here alone. If Bucky were to leave like this, Steve has an awful feeling he’d never see Bucky again. When he turns back around, Bucky is standing outside the bathroom, eyes forward, legs spread. 

He steps in front of Bucky and asks if he wants to sleep. 

“Water?” he offers, “anything?” 

Only a blank stare meets his questions. Steve doesn’t know where Bucky is right now, but he knows it’s not here. Hesitant to startle Bucky or jerk him out of his thoughts, Steve reaches up and brushes his hand against Bucky’s arm. When this doesn’t initiate a response, Steve takes a firmer grip and leads Bucky into the bedroom. To his surprise, Bucky follows where he’s led and seems to understand when Steve leaves him at the end of the bed. Bucky lies down and falls asleep before he can kick off his shoes. 

Steve undoes the laces and slides them off. Bucky’s not wearing socks and his feet have sores on the balls and heels. They’re red,  _ angry _ , Steve thinks, and he wants to clean them, but worries about waking Bucky. He leaves them for now, leaves Bucky in the bedroom. 

Steve sits down on the edge of his couch, staring at the cell phone laying on the coffee table. He picks it up, but doesn’t call anyone, starts a text to Sam, but deletes it before sending and finally just puts the whole thing back down. 

The window in here is busted. It looks nothing like the work of the world’s deadliest assassin. Steve’s eyes flicker to the newly fixed wall through which Fury was shot. 

He picks up the glass he can see in the dark, knocking the remains out of the window. A breeze brushes his face and caresses his arms. Even though Summer hasn’t quite ended, the night has taken upon itself to usher in Autumn’s beginning. It’s still hours before dawn, but orange lights from the city shine into the sky, reaching for the moon. 

Steve duck tapes a trash bag across the window frame. It looks terrible and billows with the changes in the air, but it does the job. A nice looking apartment isn’t exactly at the top of his priority list right now. 

He stares at the ceiling for hours before falling asleep on the couch. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New material next chapter! Expect it at the beginning of next week. Thanks to everyone who's read so far! As in this chapter, occasionally the POV will switch characters and a scene will repeat although it doesn't happen very often. I'll try to be clear about it when it does happen.


	3. Chapter 3

Steve wakes up with heavy muscles, staring up at the ceiling from the couch. He's reluctant to get up, remembering why he's sleeping on the couch. The trash bag still flutters in the window, a testament to the reality of last night. He hopes, _prays_ , that Bucky is still here, that he hasn’t run off. He picks up his phone to text Sam and it tells him it’s still early in the morning.

_Can’t make it today, sorry. Business came up_ , he texts. He doesn’t mention the business is in fact that person they’ve spent months looking for.

_Alright, does that mean pizza is also canceled tonight?_   Sam texts back.

_Yeah, I think this is going to take a while K, see you Tuesday_

Steve can’t even picture where he’ll be on Tuesday, in this new reality that’s presented itself. He drops the phone onto the couch without answering. He gets up and pushes the door to his bedroom open. Bucky lays on his side, knees bent toward his chest, elbows pulled up to his head. He’s so still that Steve thinks he’s still sleeping, but then a low whine forces its way toward him.

“Bucky, how are you feeling?” Steve asks. He’s not sure Bucky hears him, because he gets no response and he worries that his friend is imagining a different place and a different time. His fingers brush Bucky’s cheek, then hold. Hot, so hot.

Steve dashes to the kitchen, filling up bags with ice and dropping towels over them until he runs out. Back in the bedroom, Steve helps Bucky rolls onto his back. An ice pack goes on his forehead,two more behind his knees, and under his armpits. When the cold starts to reach his skin, Bucky’s eyes flutter open long enough to find Steve’s face standing next to him.

“Steve,” he says, the word rough and quiet, clunky coming off of a dry tongue.

“Buck,” Steve says, kneeling by the bed, “what can I do for you?”

“Dizzy,” he says, then, “water.” Steve gets water from the tap and grabs a sports drink Sam is always asking him to keep around. He helps Bucky sit up enough to drink. The first attempt spills water onto Bucky’s chest and the bedsheets, his lips refusing to form around the cup. The second try goes better. Bucky gulps down water like he could drain the Atlantic, but Steve pulls the cup away worried he’ll make himself sick. “Let it sit for a minute,” he says, laying Bucky back down on the ice packs.

“Feet hurt,” Bucky says, the words a little clearer after his drink. Steve moves toward the end of the bed to take a look at them. The raw spots are still red, the skin around them tight and swollen.

“You’re injured,” Steve says, “I need to clean the wounds, but it might hurt.” Bucky nods then squeezes his eyes tight, as if it’s the only way to ground himself. Steve gathers rubbing alcohol, tweezers, and paper towels. He’s not sure why he hasn’t thought to keep gauze or large bandages in the house. He kneels at the end of the bed and works on the wounds, dabbing them with alcohol and pulling out glass and splinters with the tweezers. _He needs a hospital_ , Steve thinks, _not a soldier with a pair of drugstore tweezers_. But if he takes Bucky to a hospital, then someone might come and try to lock him up. There haven’t been any major searches for the Winter Soldier yet, presumed dead in the crash despite what Steve has said. If they knew he was alive and where to find him, it would be a different story though.

No hospital. He has to think of something else. He pauses at regular intervals to give Bucky water and the sports drink, alternating between the two. When Steve stops operating on his feet, Bucky falls asleep again and Steve lets him rest.

Out in his sitting room, Steve paces, sits and changes position every few seconds, gets back up again. He peers in the bedroom and when he finds Bucky still fast asleep, he goes down to the corner to buy a newspaper. He wants to run, to burn off this restless energy, but he also doesn’t want to get too far away. He’s standing in front of the newspaper box and decides to call Sam.

“I’m sorry, but you have a super soldier assassin sleeping in your bed and you didn’t think to call me before now?” Sam chides.

“It’s not that I didn’t think about-”

“This is the ‘business’ that kept you yesterday, isn’t it?”

“Uh, yeah,” Steve admits.

“What, assassins don’t like pizza?”

“It was a delicate situation Sam.”

“He could have hurt you. Hell, he still could. I’ve seen what he’s capable of, or did you forget what happened two months ago? Remember Hydra, the murder helicarriers.”

“Sam, it’s Bucky. He pulled me from the river.”

There’s a pause on the other side of the phone and Steve can tell the resolve is slipping away from his friend.

“I still don’t like it,” Sam says, “but I understand why you didn’t call anyone.” Steve rests the phone between his ear and his shoulder, digging through his pockets for change. He pushes coins into the newspaper box. It’s quiet on the other side of the line.

“What am I supposed to do Sam?” Steve asks.

Sam coughs, the sound muffled through the phone, taking the time to think of a response.

“We don’t know where he’s been the last month and a half, but regardless of whatever he was doing then, he’s gotta be processing a lot of stuff. Give him the space he needs to know it’s okay to do so. Don’t try to force him into a situation if you don’t have to, give him some choice in what happens. And Steve, from what you’ve told me, he probably needs to see a doctor.”

“I’ll talk to him about it,” Steve replies. He pulls the door on the box and slides out a newspaper. His eyes skim the headline, but he doesn’t process the words.

“How are you doing, Steve?” Comes Sam’s gentle tone, the anger and frustration slipping away.

“I’m restless I need to do something,” he admits.

“You don’t to handle this on your own. If there’s something I can do, you have my number.”

“Thanks, Sam.” “Anytime Rogers. Are we still running tomorrow?”

“I could use a run,” Steve says.

.

Steve returns to the sound the shower running and he’s more than a little surprised. He doesn’t know if he could be up on his feet at this point if he’d been in Bucky’s state. He thinks about checking on Bucky to make sure he’s okay, but he worries he might embarrass Bucky. The last thing he needs to do is to isolate him further. Instead, he makes scrambled eggs and toast and a few minutes later he hears the water shut off. He’s laying plates on the breakfast table when the bathroom door opens.

Bucky stands at the entrance to the hallway holding the wall with his right hand as if the shower washed away any energy he had left, swirling down the drain with the dirt. He stands up straighter when he sees Steve watching him. Any confusion that held him the last 24 hours is gone, replaced by a dark, steely gaze. He’s wearing Steve’s clothes and a pair of thick socks to cushion his footsteps.

“Did you sleep well?” Steve asks.

He thinks he might see the tiniest of shrugs, but then again it might have been his malfunctioning metal arm.

“Would you like something to eat?” Nothing. He wonders if they’ll have to spend a lot of time playing twenty questions.

“Are you hungry?”

Bucky’s tongue darts out of his mouth, licking his lower lip. Steve smiles and motions toward the eggs. He gets two glasses of water and by the time he turns back to the table Bucky’s already sitting.

Bucky’s jaw tightens and he watches Steve until he picks up his fork and takes a bite. Like a switch being flipped, Bucky tears into the food, scraping the fractions of egg too small to stab. Every few bites he glances up at Steve who has no doubt that Bucky’s aware of every move he makes. He eats the toast last, unhurried, as if he realizes Steve isn’t going to snatch the food away from him. The thought is enough to make Steve ill.

Bucky looks up through damp hair. He’s shaved and Steve sees little nicks where his hand shook, tiny circles of blood congealed around them. The bruising around his face is less severe today, but still obvious. When Bucky finishes, Steve puts the plates in the sink. His hands rest at the rim, and he wills them to turn on the water, to scrub off the toast crumbs sticking to its surface. He’s tired, but he doesn’t have time to rest right now.

When he turns back toward the sitting room, he finds Bucky standing, staring at him with an intensity that crawls up Steve’s skin. Bucky’s eyelids flutter and he slides into the chair behind him. The metal arm jerks and Bucky’s face twitches. His other hand lifts to steady the arm, but stops and drops his gaze. Steve takes two steps out of the kitchen.

“What do you need?” Steve asks.

Bucky doesn’t answer, but looks back almost as if he’s sizing up an opponent before a fight. Three words this morning and now nothing. Did Steve do something wrong? The metal arm shakes and a thin clicking rises in the silence followed by whirring.

“I know someone who might be able to fix your arm,” Steve says, trying to remember his conversation with Sam just an hour ago.

Bucky doesn’t say anything, but his mouth parts with the thought, his eyes turning less severe. The trash bag snaps in the window frame.

“His name is Tony, he’s an expert at...a lot of things I guess. We’ll probably have to go to his lab though, where he keeps his equipment.”

Bucky’s voice pops.

“Tony Stark?”

A fragment of a question forms on Steve’s tongue, but he holds his mouth firmly shut until he’s sure he won’t ask something that will harden Bucky’s gaze again.

“Yeah,” is all he says in the end.

Bucky grunts and looks away. He carefully pulls his metal arm into his lap, holding the bicep with his right hand. Steve picks up his phone from the couch and dials Tony’s number. He wants Bucky to know he’s not lying.

“I need a favor,” Steve says into the phone, “we could use a ride. And some expertise in robotics.” He pauses for Tony’s answer. “Thanks, and hey nothing flashy, some subtly would be appreciated.” His eyes flick to the ceiling at Tony’s reply. “Yes, thank you.” He stuffs the phone into his pocket and looks back at Bucky who hasn’t moved.

“He’s sending a car,” Steve says, “it shouldn’t be long.” His hands pick at pocket lint in his jeans. “Do you want to-” pack “use the bathroom?” He almost smacks his forehead, of course Bucky doesn’t have anything to pack.

Evidently Bucky does not need to use the bathroom. He holds his arm steady while it stutters, and sweat collects at his hairline. S

teve remembers breaking his arm as a kid. He hadn’t fallen very far, just off the bed, but landed all wrong. What had his mom done?

“We could try to make a sling. It would take some of the weight off,” he says. He holds his breath, afraid he’s insulted Bucky’s pride or angered him for drawing attention to something he’s clearly trying not to make a focus of attention.

But then Bucky nods, just once.

Steve feels his shoulder relax and goes in search of something they can use. He comes back a minute later after digging through the drawers of his room, holding up a shirt for bucky to see. Bucky’s eyebrows quirk up, an expression Steve’s seen a thousand times. He’s not even sure Bucky’s doing it on purpose.

Steve hacks through the seams of the shirt and Bucky joins him standing in front of the couch. He holds the cloth under his arm and lets Bucky position it. The ends are tied into a knot behind Bucky’s shoulder. It’s not ideal, but there’s immediate relief that calms Bucky’s expression. He wishes he’d thought of it sooner. Bucky starts tenderly massaging the upper part of his shoulder and neck. Steve stands there and watches, his phone buzzing in his pocket.


	4. Chapter 4

They’re sitting in the back of a tinted car. Bucky keeps pushing hair behind his ears and Steve can’t tell if it’s genuinely bothering him or if it’s nervousness. When they lived in Brooklyn, Bucky always trimmed his hair before it started to grow over his ears. He wonders why Hydra let it grow. If it was a recognizable American they wanted, they picked one of the best, but wouldn’t they want him to look like his war pictures?

_Over the last fifty years_ , he hears Natasha telling him in a corner.

If Hydra had ever used him for some kind of propaganda, it was obvious they had stopped using Bucky Barnes a long time ago.

“I don’t know you,” Bucky says, quiet but clear.

“You know me,” Steve says. His eyebrows knit together. Bucky refuses to look at him.

“Not like he did. I’m not the boy from Brooklyn, I’m not the guy I read about in the museum. I’m-” he pauses as if he regrets what he was about to say. “I’m not James Buchanan Barnes, okay.” It’s not a question.

“Okay,” Steve says, knowing an argument would do more damage than help.

“But you can call me Bucky,” he says, “You have to call me something.”

Steve quiets, hands falling still on his thighs. He knows this is important, despite all the times he’s used his name in the past day.

“Okay Bucky,” he says. He thinks he hears a little hum in response.

The car takes them out of the city and stops before a small undeveloped plot of land. Waiting on the patchy grass is a helicopter with the Stark logo on it. Steve snorts, real subtle Tony.

Bucky stands by the side of the car, staring at the hulking beast before them. He appears apprehensive and Steve wonders if he’s found another memory.

He touches Bucky’s right arm and he jerks as if he’s just had the sensation of falling. Steve nods his head towards the helicopter and they climb into the back. The back of Bucky’s fingers brush his sling and he turns toward the window.

The pilot squeezes into the back with them, bending over in front of them. He reaches over and pulls a headset down from a hook, fitting it snugly over Steve’s head. He takes it off, adjusts it, and puts it back on again. Satisfied, he pulls another one down and fits it over Bucky’s head. Bucky’s response is immediate, his eyes snapping forward. Then he’s shoving the pilot into the seatback in front of them, hand around the man’s neck and teeth bared.

Steve shouts at him and just as fast, he blinks and falls back into the seat, releasing the pilot to the floor. The headset is still on him, though lopsided and falling toward his face. His right hand is clenched in his lap and each finger unfurls one at a time as Steve sees Bucky’s eyes focus elsewhere. A few strands of hair remain trapped between his ears and the soft leather of the headset, but Bucky does nothing to pull them out.

Then Steve remembers the pilot, fingering his throat where he sits slumped to the floor.

“I’m sorry,” Steve says, the words muffled and weak coming from his mouth. He holds out a hand to help the pilot up, but when the man hears his voice, he practically leaps out of the helicopter and goes to the front.

Bucky doesn’t move so Steve doesn’t either. Despite not doing anything, fatigue seeps through him until Steve thinks he’ll never have the energy to move again.

.

The helicopter lands on top of Avengers tower and Steve finds he regains a bit of his energy once he’s standing on solid ground again. Bucky’s headset fell off a while ago onto the hard plastic lining the floor and neither of them bother to hang it back up. Bucky comes out after Steve, standing still behind his shoulder.

Tony walks out from a pair of giant glass doors and heads directly towards them, hands in his pockets. The helicopter doesn’t wait around for Tony, taking off almost as soon as they’ve cleared its space. Steve feels the back of his shirt flutter up behind him and then fall unmoving against his skin.

“Captain,” Tony says, stretching a hand out towards them in a welcoming gesture. Steve can tell he’s been working on something because in place of his usual suit is a tank and sweatpants.

“Thanks for the ride on short notice,” Steve says.

“Don’t worry about it. And I see you’ve brought along, ahh Sergeant Barnes, I was wondering when I was going to be seeing you.”

Bucky takes a step beside Steve, feet spread. He clenches his right hand by his side, but it doesn’t quite stop the shaking. His skin is once more waxen and off color.

“Can I use your bathroom?” Bucky asks Tony, his voice rock steady despite what’s happened in the last few hours.

“Course,” Tony says, “Just go out those doors down the hall. If you can’t find it, Jarvis can tell you.”

Without question Bucky leaves them, speeding up the closer he gets to the doors. After they slide shut Tony turns his attention back to Steve.

“When did he show up?” Tony asks.

“Last night,” Steve says, noting how the sun is disappearing behind the skyline. _When did it get to be so late?_ He thinks.

“How does he seem?”

Steve thinks for a minute, playing back their interactions in his head.

“Defensive,” he says at last.

Tony shrugs. “Makes sense.”

“His arm isn’t working right, and he didn’t say exactly, but he’s in pain.” He thinks about the look of relief when they took the weight of the arm off his shoulder.

“I surmised as much from your phone call and the sling. I’ll look at it first thing if he’s ready for it.” There’s a pause and then Tony asks him, “How are _you_?”

Steve raises his eyebrows and drops his gaze for a moment.

“Well my childhood best friend essentially just came back from the dead so I couldn’t be better, could I?”

Tony gives him a long, serious look from behind his glasses that says, ‘ _I’m calling your bullshit, but in a second I’m going to let you get away with it_.’

Steve feels antsy under the scrutiny and starts rocking from one foot to the other.

“I’m going to make sure Bucky found the bathroom,” he says, already moving away from Tony. “He...the helicopter ride could have been better.”

He’s through the sliding doors before Tony can say anything more, the sounds of the city replaced by humming machines. When he reaches the bathroom, he holds up a hand to knock on the door, his fist stopping an inch from the wood. The sound of running water is constant behind the door and behind that, Steve thinks he can hear retching.

His hand falls away and rests on the wall opposite the door. For a second Steve thinks he’s going to be sick, but it passes as the cool texture of the wall under his fingers grounds him. He returns to the lab without knocking.

“Did he find it okay?” Tony asks when Steve steps back into the room. He’s reading something off a display and his eyes never flicker to see Steve’s expression.

“Yeah, yeah he found it,” Steve replies. He feels like maybe he should say something, but his throat tightens, cutting off any words. He clears it, but it doesn’t seem to make that much of a difference.

Bucky returns with red eyes and a damp face and Steve can’t tell if it’s from sweat or water from the faucet. At least some of the color in his face has returned.

“Hey Buck,” Steve says, pausing to clear his throat again, “Tony wants to take a look at your arm to see what he needs to do to fix it. Do you feel up to that?”

Bucky eyes Tony, still staring at his screen, and then nods.

“Great, uh, why don’t you come sit over here,” Steve says. He’s standing near one of Tony’s workbenches and he gestures to a straight backed chair next to it.

Bucky sits and undoes the makeshift sling by digging his fingers into the knot until it loosens. He moves the chair so it’s parallel to the table and props his metal arm on the worktable as if this too is something he’s done many times before. His gaze falls back to Tony, waiting.

After another moment Tony puts down the tablet and approaches them. From his twitching fingers, Steve can tell he’s actually excited to get his hands on the arm, but keeps his features schooled into that of a professional. He uses a thin screwdriver to remove one of the plates from the forearm and pokes around for a minute with what he can see.

A frown slowly takes over Tony’s neutral expression and soon he ditches his tools and grabs a second, smaller tablet. He holds it over the arm, starting at Bucky’s fingertips and working his way up to the shoulder. It scans through a program Steve is willing to bet Tony coded himself and outputs the results onto a screen installed in the lab. They appear to be blueprints of the arm, the projections sorting themselves from basic outlines and structural support to the wiring system and another for, well Steve’s not sure. It’s mostly a bare outline with dark circles blocking the picture in different places.

Before Steve can take a longer look, Tony merges the layers and swipes it off the screen. It reappears in 3D on a circular table top. Without bothering to make sure the data made it to the other computers, Tony sets the tablet on the work table and looks up at Bucky again.

“Would it be okay if you took your shirt off so I can get a better look at where the arm is grafted,” Tony asks?

Bucky nods and pulls his arm off the table, letting it hang in his lap. Using his right hand, he grabs the back of his shirt and pulls it over his head, dropping it beside the chair.

Steve sucks in a gust of air. The skin around his shoulder is swollen worse than yesterday and angry red lines are starting to creep outward. He feels like an idiot for not checking on it earlier today. He looks over at Tony who in turn is looking at the numerous bruises still covering Bucky’s visible skin. The expression isn’t so much one of surprise as it is of disgust.

Bucky returns his arm to the table. Tony bends over him, fingers ghosting over the shoulder. Watching him, Bucky nods again and Tony traces a line where skin meets metal, sometimes having to push the skin to see the graft. A shudder runs down Bucky’s spine, but otherwise he remains still until Tony is satisfied.

“Jarvis, run a health scan on Sergeant Barnes here,” Tony says.

“Already have, sir,” Jarvis replies.

Bucky’s head snaps up and his eyes narrow as he tries to find the fourth person in the room. Steve can practically see all of Bucky’s walls, his defenses rising back up. He thinks of saying something, explaining, but Jarvis starts speaking again and his attention is drawn away.

“In terms of his arm, Mr. Barnes has an infection causing inflammation. His body is combating it well considering the aggravation from the weight of the arm and the cellular stress caused by its malfunctioning. Under current conditions, the infection will continue to worsen. Recommended course of action is to fix it or otherwise remove the aggravation.”

“Okay, but how did he get an infection? The serum should have taken care of it,” Steve says. He addresses Tony, but it’s Jarvis who answers.

“It is unknown where he picked up the original infection, however there appears to be trauma to the feet that would have left him susceptible to infectious agents. It was probably a small infection originally, but when it activated his immune response, which under normal conditions would have taken care of it as you suggested, reacted against what it perceives as a foreign object and is now divided.”

“Foreign object, you mean the arm?” Steve asks.

“Yes. More than likely Mr. Barnes was previously taking immunosuppressants to prevent such a thing from occurring and has recently withdrawn from them. Mr. Barnes also has bruised ribs, has recently broken his nose, and is experiencing withdrawal symptoms of other drugs.”

“What drugs,” Tony asks, before Steve can.

“I cannot answer that, sir.”

Steve’s mouth feels dry. He looks back to Bucky only to find the other man looking at him. His muscles are visibly tensed and he’s sitting up in the chair as if he’s ready to run.

Tony zooms into the display of the arm, studying an area under the curve of his shoulder.

“There’s attachment points here, to separate the shoulder from the rest of the arm,” he says while marking them on his screen. “How often did they take it off?” Tony looks up from the display so he can look at Bucky. Bucky leans back in the chair again, but his jaw is still tense when he replies.

“I don’t know. They only took it off for big things I think; I remember having to retrain with it when they put it back on.”

“What was it like when they took it off?” Tony asks.

Bucky’s eyes twitch away from Tony and his mouth parts as if to answer. His right hand clutches his thigh until Steve can see visible signs of shaking and his left arm bends sharply at the elbow moving protectively toward his chest.

“Sir, Mr. Barnes’ heart rate is increasing,” Jarvis says.

Steve glares at Tony and makes a move toward Bucky, but then Tony throws his hand up and halts him.

Tony squats in front of Bucky, rubbing his jaw in thought.

“Sergeant Barnes, James. The date is September 9th, 2014. You are in my lab in Avengers tower in New York. Captain America, Steve Rogers is here with you. You are not in the past. You are safe.” Tony licks his lips before repeating, “James, the date is September 9th, 2014. You’re in my lab in Avengers tower in New York. Captain America, Steve Rogers is here with you. You’re not in the past. You are safe.”

“Heart rate decreasing, sir,” Jarvis notes from above.

It’s the 4th iteration that brings Bucky back to himself. His eyes focus on Tony’s and after a few seconds he looks away. He pushes his left arm back onto the table.

“Painful,” is all he says.

Steve unclenches his fists, feeling little moons along his palms. He’s grateful for Tony, and he’s angry with himself for just standing there and letting whatever happened happen. In truth, he had no idea what to do for Bucky and that bothers him.

Tony stands up straight and paces across the room, weighing his options.

“I’m not very familiar with the tech. Even the layout inside is different, illogical compared to how things are built now. It would be easier to work with if I remove it.”

Steve stands taller, immediately on edge.

“Is that really the best idea? He just said it was incredibly painful,” Steve growls. His hands are in fists again, held still at his hips.

“He didn’t use the word ‘incredibly’ and it’s not your decision,” Tony snaps back.

Steve’s face turns hot, his hands dropping as if he’d just cut them on a sharp knife.

They both look back to Bucky.

After a moment’s pause, Bucky’s tongue darts out and then he says, “remove it.”

Steve takes a step towards him, coming up to his side.

“Buck, there are other ways,” he says, “we have other options.”

“Remove it,” he says again, voice hard and low, unwavering.

Steve retracts his step, heart missing a beat. He knows he’s just overstepped a boundary without meaning to. He’s leaned too hard on a friendship that exists only in the past.

Tony lays out all the tools he thinks he’ll need, lining them up like on an operating table or pencils before an exam. When he has everything ready he leans over the worktable and mumbles, “I’m sorry.”

His hands work the tools to deal with the mechanism that splits the two parts of the arm from each other. It locks right as the shoulder curves down into his bicep and with the awkward angle, Tony has to keep shuffling around the table. Minutes stretch on and then with a final tweak, the mechanism unlocks, and the arm starts to pull apart. Bucky holds the arm steady at his bicep so it won’t move while Tony works in the middle.

Tony picks up a tool not unlike a mirror dentists use to look behind teeth. He sticks it through the gap and Steve can see it emits light as well.

“All the structural support is unlocked inside here so looks like I just need to disconnect these wires.”

Bucky nods, face calm, but the muscles in his torso and right arm seize up in anticipation.

Steve knows what that’s like, just waiting for pain you know is coming.

“Are you ready?” Tony asks. He’s picked up another tool in his left hand, some kind of plier with thin rubber tips. Tony and Bucky exchange a look Steve can’t discern, but he does see Tony’s tiny nod before he pushes the tools into the gap.

He starts disconnecting wires one at a time and as fast as he safely can. Bucky grits his teeth for about half a minute, face scrunching up the longer it goes on and finally the pain escapes in a sound somewhere between a yell and a gasp. Yet he doesn’t move away.

Steve feels panic rising up in his chest. Tony can’t see what’s happening out here when he’s so focused on the inside.

“What’s happening, why does it hurt so much? Stop,” Steve pleads.

Bucky is silent again and Tony continues with the job.

“Everything’s wired to his nervous system. His body thinks I’m trying to hurt him, it’s like touching a raw nerve,” Tony grunts. Steve doesn’t find this to be a sufficient answer, because clearly he is hurting him.

Before he can say something back, Bucky starts screaming, unable to hold it in behind clenched teeth any longer. Nausea rises up in Steve and he’s forced to look away, coughing and gagging. When he looks back Tony is almost done. The arm comes off with a large thunk onto the table, Bucky letting loose of it immediately. He falls in on himself, right arm pulled close to his stomach and head between his knees. Sweat covers Bucky’s back and his skin is that sickly yellow color it was earlier today. It feels like hours before he stops shaking.

“When you’re ready, I’ll neutralize those wires for now,” Tony says after another minute, voice calm. He moves the arm onto a different table and cleans up some of the extra tools.

It’s a while longer still before Bucky sits up. When he does, his limbs sag, the energy drained from his body.

Tony makes quick work on the wires and then bandages his shoulder until it’s covered and secure.

“I can show you and Steve to your rooms, but I must insist you see a doctor today,” he says.

Without a word Bucky stands up and pulls his shirt on, unbalanced for the first few steps. He falls in stride with Tony and in turn Steve falls in behind them.

The guest wing is several floors down. The rooms are paired in twos, pushed back with a small sitting area to each pair. The middle of the floor serves as a common space with a living room, a kitchen, and a dining area. Tony stops in front of one of the suites, seemingly picking one at random.

Bucky flashes a hand at them as if to say _wait,_ and shuffles off to the bathroom. Steve watches after him, a lingering sense of uselessness hanging onto him.

“When you get into the elevator, tell Jarvis to take you to the hospital wing. It’s where employees go to receive free medical care. I’ll call ahead and ask them to clear out,” Tony says. He starts to leave, but pauses when Steve calls out to him.

“Hey, how did you know what to do when Bucky…” he’s not sure what the right word is, panicked? Drifted away? “When he seemed to be remembering something bad,” he says at last.

Tony nods his head to the side.

“Because I have to have that same conversation with myself sometimes,” he says.

Steve’s eyebrows raise, his mouth a thin line of disbelief.

Tony stands up straight, defensive.

“What, you’re going to tell me you never think you’re crashing back into the ice?” He turns and leaves, giving Steve one last cold look through the elevator doors.

For what feels like the hundredth time today Steve feels like he needs a good smack in the face. How many times is he going to be rude and insensitive today. He knows what Tony’s been through. Tony never talks about what happened to him, but then again, Steve doesn’t really either.

Bucky emerges from the bathroom, looking no better or worse. When the elevator returns, they take it to see the doctor.

…..

 

Tired, he’s so tired. His body feels ten times heavier than normal, and every step is an effort. He knows Tony’s right though, he needs to see a doctor. And the thought of sleep afterward is enough to propel Bucky into the elevator.

“Would it be okay if we went downstairs and a doctor looked at you?” Steve had asked when he came out of the bathroom. The tone irritated Bucky. He hates it when Steve looks at him like a fragile piece of glassware, something he’s done a lot in the past day. He’s not going to snap like some twig. A doctor’s visit is nothing compared to the last few months, not that he wants to talk about that with _Steve_.

When they get to the right level, Steve hops off first, rushing into a waiting room and the  receptionist. By the time he catches up, a doctor has come from behind a locked door and is gesturing for them to come inside.

“Hello James, my name is Dr. Welch,” she says, holding out her hand. He hesitates and then shakes it, shoving through the fatigue.

“Bucky,” he mumbles.

“Okay Bucky. Well I just want to get a little information first.” She has him stand on a scale, but only estimates his height. She asks about recent weight loss. He shrugs. She asks about trouble sleeping. He shrugs again. Everyone has bad nights.

“Can I take a sample of your blood?”

Another shrug. He has blood taken all the time, nothing new. He holds out his arm.

“Oh eager aren’t we?”

Bucky wishes he was less annoyed by the doctor and her upbeat tone. Really, Dr. Welch is much nicer than any of the doctors he’s used to seeing. She always asks first. She takes him into a private room, shutting Steve outside. She asks him to undress to his underwear and leaves to give him some privacy. It’s easier to get his clothes off now that his dead arm isn’t hanging in the way. He has to peel the socks off his feet, pulling at the raw skin there.

When she comes back she does a full examination of his bruises, sends him for a chest x-ray even though Tony said they were only bruised, and cleans out his nose along with any remaining cuts.

While she applies medicine to his feet, she informs him of doctor-patient confidentiality and asks him some other questions about how he ended up in this state. For many of the questions all he can do is nod yes or no. After finishing his feet the doctor leaves again to allow him to change back into his clothes. He leaves the socks off, afraid to mess up the new bandages, and carefully slides his feet back into his shoes.

She gives him some cream to put on his feet, and several oral prescriptions including an immunosuppressant and medication to help alleviate the more severe withdrawal symptoms.

They go back outside to the first room where Steve’s standing, clearly restless.

“I would like to do an MRI,” Dr. Welch says to Bucky. “Is that something we can do?”

“I don’t know what that is,” he says.

“It’s a machine that lets us see inside your body. It would allow us to better assess potential damage to your organs including the brain. If you come with me I’ll show you our machine.”

Bucky shrugs, that promise of sleep keeping him upright. They follow the doctor into a back room, completely closed off from the examination rooms. In the middle of the room is a bulky tube, connected to some monitoring equipment. Bucky stops as soon as he steps into the room and sees it. The doctor doesn’t notice and pulls something up on the computer next to it.

“See, this is a model of what we’ll be able to see in your body, do you want to come take a look?” she asks.

Steve lightly touches his shoulder and then walks across the room to join her.

Bucky’s head feels fuzzy, a noise like buzzing static rising in his ears.

“No,” Bucky says, but it comes out in a whisper and he’s not sure anyone’s heard him. His eyes remain locked on the machine.

“Bucky?” It’s Steve’s voice.

“No! I can’t-”

“Bucky, hey.” Now Steve’s coming toward him, and he has to get out.

“I have to...get out of here.” His words sound breathy to his own ears and he can’t tell if he’s still breathing or not. “No, no,” he insists before speeding out of the room. Steve’s calling out behind him, but he can’t stop. He needs to get far away from here.

He runs out of the room and takes off down the hall. He doesn’t know where he’s going, but there’s a door to a stairwell and he shoves through it, practically leaping down whole flights of stairs to try and get away. When he finally stops he leans against a wall, his ears still ringing.

.

_Put him on ice._

_He’s still strapped into the chair, panting from the stress the electricity put on him. The rubber is gone meaning there’s no more, but he can’t remember how long he’s been in the chair._

_._

Bucky’s on the floor, looking as the bland paint but not really seeing it.

.

_The metal around his limbs unhinges and someone hauls him upright by the arm. He’s alright standing, but once they pull him forward, he stumbles over his feet. Something in his knees won’t lock properly._

_He’s yanked up again and taken over to a big cylinder he’s never seen before. A hand turns him around and shoves him inside, his head hitting the back of the thing. The door is locked behind him. He wonders if this is a new kind of torture they’ve made for him._

_._

The ringing hasn’t stopped and the fluorescent lighting in the stairwell burns his eyes.

.

_Cold shoots up, splintering his muscles. He opens his mouth to scream, but nothing comes out. He sees them watching him through a small window, and then he doesn’t see anything at all._

…..

 

Steve spends hours combing floors looking for Bucky before he remembers he can ask Jarvis where he is. When it leads him back to their rooms he’s not even surprised.

Bucky’s claimed the room on the left. Steve pauses in front of the doorway and looks in through the wide open door. He wonders if Bucky left it open on purpose, but more than likely he was just too exhausted to swing it shut. Even though the light isn’t flipped on, the room faces outward and enough light from the window comes in to illuminate the figure lying there.

Bucky is sprawled on his stomach near the far side of the bed. The end of his metal arm rests just over the edge, his other arm pulled up near his face. He’s out cold, hair sticking to his neck and face. Steve can see heavy breathes rise and fall from within his chest, which he can’t imagine is comfortable with bruised ribs.

Steve pulls the door cracked and goes into the other bedroom. He swings his own door shut, rubbing at his face and wanting to tear something apart.

He takes a shower. The soaps and shampoos smell foreign, all either fruity or ‘pine tree’ and ‘ocean breeze’. After he’s rinsed the suds out, he turns the shower to cold and rests his head against the shower wall. He lets the water run until his mind feels less foggy and he feels grounded again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone for being so patient waiting for this chapter! The next chapter will be shorter and I hope to get it out before the end of the semester and then I have lots of time in December to write.


	5. Chapter 5

Steve wakes up to the blaring of his ringtone, barely muffled by the pants pocket he left it in the night before. He digs it out and Sam’s name pops up on the screen. He clears his throat before answering, trying to rid it of the tight knot forming there.

“I guess this means you’re not joining me this morning?” comes Sam’s annoyed greeting.

“I’m sorry Sam, I forgot to call,” Steve says, pausing to check the time. 5:30 a.m. “I’m at the tower. Bucky seemed interested in fixing his arm so-”

“Stark took a look at it. It’s okay, at least I won’t have you showing me up to all the girls on the lawn this morning.” A familiar teasing tone slides back into his voice and Steve realizes he must have really worried Sam when he didn’t show this morning.

“Yeah, the only time you can keep up with me is when I’m still in bed,” Steve taunts.

“ _Right_ ,” Sam replies and Steve can almost see the smirk associated with the tone. “Keep me updated or I’ll have to hound you for details. I know where you’re staying, Rogers.”

“I’ll remember,” he promises. The conversation winds down, but there’s a pressure in his chest that keeps him from hanging up. His throat starts to grow tight again and it’s an act of will to speak. “Sam?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you think you could come up here? I don’t know what I’m...it’d be good to…”

“I’ve got work at the VA this week, but I can come this weekend. I might be able to put in for time off.”

“No, your job is important, I’ll be alright.”

“I’ll come up for the weekend,” Sam says. “And don’t sweat it too hard, any of this.”

“He hates me,” Steve says, knowing he doesn’t have to clarify to whom he refers.

“He doesn’t hate you. Like I said, he’s gotta be processing a lot of shit right now. Just give him some space and,” he pauses before saying, “maybe see if he wants to talk to someone, alright?”

“Yeah, okay.”

“Catch you later, Steve.”

“Better get to running, Sam.”

Feeling well-rested from a considerably early night of sleep, Steve goes about his morning routine like normal even though the situation is anything but. He pauses at the door to Bucky’s room, opening it enough for him to see inside. Bucky is still asleep, rolled onto his back with half a sheet pulled over him. He’d clearly been sleep deprived when he showed up at Steve’s and he hadn’t really gotten a lot of sleep there, so Steve’s glad he’s able to get some true rest here. He wishes he knew what happened after Bucky ran away yesterday; if he knew, maybe he could stop it from happening again. He leaves the door as is and goes to the common area to look for food.

There’s a moment when he enters the room that he thinks he must still be dreaming, because Natasha is sitting at the table, feet resting on top, and popping blueberries into her mouth.

“Hey sleepyhead, it’s about time you woke up,” she says.

“Natasha? What are you doing here?” Steve asks.

“Well currently, I’m enjoying this full breakfast spread of Stark’s.”

Indeed, the table is covered in different traditional breakfast foods including both waffles and pancakes, eggs, bacon, fruits, oatmeal, cereal, and more.

“I mean, why are you here, at the tower?” Steve refines. “I thought you were out of the country or something.”

She pulls her feet off the table and sits up straight to speak to him.

“Stark notified me as soon as he realized you were bringing Bucky here.”

Steve picks up a mug and fills it with coffee, steam rising to his face. His back is to her for the moment, a relief from her all too knowing stare. He doesn’t want her to read him right now.

“How is he?” she asks.

“To be honest, I don’t really know. He hasn’t said much, at least not to me. We’ve had a few short conversations and they seem to be going okay, but suddenly they’ll turn south and I’m left feeling like I’ve done something wrong.” The coffee pot returns to the counter a little harder than intended. “He seems almost mad at me.”

When he sits down at the table Natasha moves on to a grapefruit, carving out tiny holes at a time with a serrated spoon.

“A lot’s happened,” she says.

“So I hear,” he snaps, knowing it unfair. He takes a long drink of the coffee, relishing the way it burns his tongue. After another moment he says, “Thanks for coming, Nat,” in a softer, apologetic tone.

She inclines her head and focuses her attention behind him. Steve turns to look over his shoulder and sees Bucky standing there, hair sticking out on one side.

“Hey James, I’m Natasha,” she says, smiling up at him.

He considers her, her body language and that relaxed smile.

“Black widow,” he says. She does nothing to confirm or deny the statement.

“Did you sleep well, are you hungry?” Steve says, words running into each other in his need to diffuse the tension raising the hairs on his arms.

Bucky nods a little and sits down on the side of the table closer to Natasha. He dumps some cereal into a bowl and goes to grab almond milk. His hand hovers over the finished paperboard carton for several seconds, as if waiting to see if someone will snap at him, before grabbing it and pouring it in the bowl. Steve gets oatmeal with walnuts and brown sugar for himself, keeping his eyes glued to his bowl while they eat in silence.

Bucky eats carefully, taking only small spoonfuls of cereal at a time, and while Steve thinks his own shoulders might pop with stress, Nat seems perfectly at ease. Steve gives her an opened mouth look like ‘how do you do it?” She smiles serenely back at him and returns to picking at her bagel.

Halfway through his cereal, Bucky pauses mid-chew, eyebrows scrunched together in thought. Steve gets ready to diffuse some situation that he’s sure is bound to happen, but after a few long moments, Bucky relaxes and scoops some chopped bananas into his bowl.

“There not the same kind we had back in the 40’s,” Steve says.

Bucky chews longer than necessary as if savoring the flavor. After he swallows he says, “I don’t remember the taste.”

Steve winces, glad that Bucky isn’t looking at him and his flushed cheeks.

“Then these probably taste good,” Steve says in one long breath. “Everyone else seems to like them.”

Bucky nods, taking another bite of cereal and banana.

“I like them,” he says.

Natasha smiles, wiggling her eyebrows at Steve. She waits until Bucky finishes his food and then gets up from the table.

“I think I’m headed to the gym. James, care to join me?” She asks.

Bucky stands almost immediately, knocking his elbow against the back of the chair.

“I should train,” he says.

“Do you want to train?” Natasha asks.

“I want to go,” he says a moment later. Nat smiles and they leave together while Steve remains at the table until his coffee turns cold.

.

Later in the day Steve finds his way back to Tony’s lab. Unsurprisingly, Tony is there working on the arm. More of the metal plates have been pulled off, left scattered around a workbench, and he’s currently soldering something from behind a hood. Steve wonders if he even went to bed last night. He watches, hands stuffed in the pockets of his pants, until Tony turns off his tool and pulls the mask off of his face.

He glances at Steve and then back down to a tablet with schematics of the arm and scribbled notes in the margins, bright red circling key areas.

“There’s something strange about the tech,” Tony says. “It’s not quite like anything I’ve seen before, but it’s getting easier. I pulled out all the hormones and shock factors this morning, took a long time to find all of it.”

“What exactly does that mean?” Steve asks.

Tony fingers a vial on the table, rolling it around before tossing it for Steve to catch. It’s filled with clear liquid that looks oddly discolored in his hand.

“The arm was wired to deliver hormones and drugs into his bloodstream, epinephrine, sedatives, things they could do from a relative distance depending on the situation. Then there’s these little chips-” Tony pauses and holds up a small rectangular shape using a pair of tweezers. “Designed to provide electrical shock, pretty powerful too. Most of them looked remotely controlled, but others were built with a timer. Without being reset at regular intervals, it’s supposed to deliver electric shocks and acts to disable the arm. I’m guessing it’s to pressure the Winter Soldier into returning for maintenance, in case he got any ideas about not going back.” He drops the chip back into a tray where it bounces off another one. “He’s lucky, they didn’t all go off.”

Steve’s still standing there with the vial in his hands. His fingers curl around it with the desire to shatter it, but it won’t do any good now, it’s already out of Bucky’s arm. His throat is tight when he swallows his outburst down. He’ll take his anger out on a punching bag later. Bucky was half right when he attacked Steve, delirious with pain, Hydra is still fucking with him, even now.

“I’m assuming you’ll be staying for a while, so I asked Pepper to order some clothes for the two of you.”

Steve’s not sure if Tony sensed his anger and is trying to distract him, or if he was just checking off a box on his mental to-do list, but he’s grateful.

“You didn’t need to do that Tony. You’re already letting us stay here, and, well Bucky…” _could probably actually use some clothes of his own_. “I can go back to D.C. and pack a bag for myself, it slipped my mind the first time.”

“Don’t bother, it’s already done,” Tony says.

“Okay,” Steve says, still a little hesitant. “I can get Bucky’s sizes in a bit then.”

“Don’t bother, Jarvis got it all last night.”

“Ah, right, thanks,” he mumbles, shuffling his feet.

Tony sighs and crosses his arms in front of his chest.

“Something on your mind?” Tony asks.

“Nah, no, just uh, Bucky went to the gym with Nat and I’m not really sure what to do with myself,” he admits.

“Well it’s not mucking about my lab.” He waves his hand toward the doors and leans back over his work. Steve sets the vial down on a bench nearby, resisting the urge to smash it on the floor, and drags himself out of the room.

Steve wanders the tower for a while. In all the times he’s been here, he still hasn’t found everything, granted when he’s here he usually didn’t have time to go exploring. He still can’t find the main kitchen, but he does find a movie theater, a sauna and a pool, and a library so large he doesn’t think anyone could read so many books in a century.

He heads back to the apartments as the restless energy in his legs eases. The shower is running in his and Bucky’s place; they must have finished up at the gym. The thought of trying to have a conversation with Bucky right now feels exhausting and the weight of fatigue pushes him back out of the apartment. He grabs an empty journal from the bookshelf in the common room and gets into the elevator.

“Roof please.”

The doors open to a bright sky, a single cloud like a wisp of smoke swimming through the air, so different from the grey smog clouding his own thoughts. He rests his arms on the wall at the edge of the roof, and watches over the city. Everything Big and Important down on the streets looks so small from up here, the motion of the bustling city much calmer with distance. Even though it feels like time has stopped moving for him, staking him to this terrible moment heavy with fatigue, he can see the traffic push on and know it’s a lie.

With loosened muscles, Steve goes to a patio table and sits down. He opens the journal, a breeze ruffling the pages and rolling the pencil into the crook of the binding. He smooths the paper down with one hand and starts sketching with the other. At first it’s nothing, then buildings form and a cab car from the city below. On the next page he draws flowers as they come to mind: a cluster of baby’s breath, a crisp sunflower, a field of tulips as a swooping bird might see them. On another page Bucky’s face forms. He looks how Steve remembers him from their time in the war, uniform crisp, eyes untouched by the tragedies they saw, but his hair falls from under his cap, almost to his shoulders. Nat grows next to him, her easy-going smile pairing well with the sharper lines in Bucky’s face. And Sam, sitting at Steve’s breakfast table after a long day of work. He even draws a part of himself, but the pencil soon stops. It remains pointed on the paper for some time, and even after he puts it down it feels like it should stay.

He flips back through the pages, admiring. He’s pleased with his work although he has no idea how he did it, the tiredness settling around his hands again. There’s a longing in him, some instinct telling him to go! Do something! Yet when he tries to think of what that something’s supposed to be, he comes back with something that doesn’t feel good enough if anything comes to him at all. It’s hours before he heads back inside, the sunlight already replaced with glare from buildings and billboards.

.

Steve’s skin feels dry from the sun and wind; he rubs his arms and cheeks in the elevator. It’s funny how a few hours can change something like that without you even realizing it was happening. The elevator bounces to a stop with a soft ding.

Steve heads back toward his apartment, the sketchbook hanging loosely in his hand. He drops it on a chair upon entering their alcove. He pinches his eyes together, weighing the merits of just going to sleep, but voices from further back in the common area draw him out again.

Standing in the kitchen, backs toward him are Bucky and Nat. They’re speaking amicably in Russian, well Steve’s pretty sure it’s Russian. He shuffles into the doorway, holding the back of his neck. Chest burning, he hopes his skin doesn’t look flushed. He hates to interrupt, but his curiosity is getting the better of him. In half a week, he’s never had a conversation this long with Bucky. Bucky turns a little to the side, enough for Steve to see him smile. He’s startled with the realization he hasn’t seen Bucky smile since he came back. His teeth are straighter, whiter too, he thinks. Natasha can make anyone smile when she wants to, Steve likes that about her. For the second time today Steve is grateful she’s here, glad that she has found a way to make Bucky smile when he couldn’t.

He steps further into the room and Natasha turns to him, shooting him a smile of her own.

“Hey, where did you run off and hide today?” She asks, leaning back against a kitchen counter, one foot propped against a cabinet door.

“Just checking out the tower, I don’t think I’ll ever see it all,” Steve replies and drops his hand.

Bucky too, has turned to watch Steve’s approach, his hand draped casually in one of the pockets of his sweatpants. Steve doesn’t miss the way Bucky’s features cool in his presence, mouth falling into a tight, thin line. He’s getting ready to excuse himself and go to bed after all when Bucky addresses him.

“We waited for you.” he says. His voice has none of the roughness from the past few days, but he still doesn’t look as relaxed as he did a moment ago before he realized Steve was standing behind him.

“Waited for what?” Steve asks.

“To eat. Dinner,” he clarifies.

Steve looks through the kitchen and over to the dining table where an untouched hot meal is waiting for them. Some unnameable emotion washes over him, simultaneously making his nose sting and his muscles tense. He waits until it passes to look back at them, wishing he’d come in a little sooner.

“Thank you,” he says with a smile. “Let’s eat.”

The dinner spread is certainly smaller than breakfast this morning, but still seems like a huge amount of food for three people. There’s pot roast with mashed potatoes and gravy, string beans, and fresh bread wrapped in tin foil to keep it warm and soft. Steve takes a large helping for himself, having forgotten that he skipped lunch until his stomach rumbled at the smell of food. Every time he’s at the tower, he worries about what happens to the food they don’t eat. Is it packaged up into some industrial size fridge to eat later? Does it get thrown out? He doesn’t recall ever having leftovers. Steve almost asked Tony the first time he was at the tower, but they weren’t exactly friends at the time and he thought maybe it was rude to ask someone who clearly can afford to waste food.

The tone too is different from this morning. Conversation is amicable, not forced; Steve doesn’t feel like he’s walking on eggshells. Bucky doesn’t say much unless Natasha asks him a question, but he’s clearly paying attention. He even smiles again when Steve makes a bad joke and Nat teases him about it.

Steve messes with the remains of his mashed potatoes while Natasha tells a story about a vacation in Majorca, pushing them up and down with his fork.

“Excuse me are you listening or playing with your food?” She asks.

“Who says I can’t do both,” Steve retorts. “And besides I’m not playing, I’m _sculpting_. Look, it’s a duck.”

“That looks nothing like a duck, it’s more like a lopsided, well lump.”

“It’s a duck, look the beak is right here,” he insists, pointing.

She reaches over, swipes the ‘beak’ with her fork, and eats it.

“Hey!”

Natasha leans back in her chair, smirking.

“And they call you an artist,” she scoffs. “I can’t believe people pay millions of dollars for your sketchbooks.”

There’s a loud clack as Bucky stabs a piece of pot roast with too much force.

“Why would someone spend all that money on sketchbooks?” he asks. He’s staring at the pot roast at the end of his fork, eyebrows crushed together. Steve can’t tell if the confusion is because he doesn’t think art valuable, especially not Steve’s, or if it’s from memories of living in the 40’s, remembering the times they struggled to get enough money for food and housing.

Steve remembers when Bucky gave him a set of charcoal pencils for his birthday, refusing to take them back when Steve asked about the cost. Those pencils had made some of the same sketches owned by strangers today.

“I don’t know. I guess after I... after the war people found them,” Steve says.

“But, all that money?” Bucky says.

“Yeah, after the plane crash everyone thought I was dead, I mean even I thought-” he cuts himself off upon receiving a quick, nasty look from Natasha. “When people die, anything they made usually becomes more valuable, right? Because they can’t make any more or something. I’m with you though, I don’t know why anyone thinks they’re that valuable.

Bucky considers this for a minute.

“But now they know you’re not dead, shouldn’t they go back to you? Aren’t they yours?” he asks.

Steve shrugs. “It’s alright. It was from a different time, and besides, they did pay for them so legally they own them.”

There’s another pause and Steve glances over at Natasha, thinking the conversation is over, but then Bucky asks another question.

“Did anyone buy any of,” he pauses and gestures vaguely to himself. “Stuff.”

Steve lays his fork on his plate so it doesn’t make any sound. This is one of the first real questions Bucky’s asked about something related to the war and he’s nervous about saying something to upset him. He uncrosses his limbs uncrossed turns to look at Bucky.

“Yeah. I think some of your letters home, and the Natural History Museum has the howling commando uniforms.”

Bucky expression remains neutral as he says, “I saw the museum.” Steve can’t tell if he’s happy with his answer, but he certainly doesn’t seem displeased so he counts it as a win.

They finish the rest of their dinner in companionable silence. When everyone is finished they sit together in the common room, talking for a while longer before Bucky gets tired and goes to bed.

As soon as he hears Bucky’s footsteps receding down the hall, Steve turns to Natasha. She immediately holds up a hand to stop him.

“Before you start playing 20 questions, I want it on the record that those potatoes in no way resembled a duck,” she says.

“Nat, this is serious,” he groans.

“Alright, alright let the interrogation begin,” she says, holding up her hands in mock surrender and settling further into the couch.

“What did you guys do today?” he asks.

“Well if you hadn’t completely disappeared you might know.”

She’s right of course, but Steve felt he needed the space to take a breather. Besides, he’d gotten the impression Bucky would do better without him.

“How was the gym?” he asks.

“It was good, he loosened up. He’s well trained. Even though he’s clearly weaker than what’s his usual, he’s a force to be reckoned with.”

“Did you just use the phrase _’reckoned with’_?”

“When did you become the word police?” she chides.

He remembers the bruises covering Bucky’s torso, the protruding bones evidence of his starved state. Did he eat enough at dinner? Steve can’t picture his plate now.

“How did he seem?” he asks.

“Like I said he relaxed a little in the gym once we started sparring. What can I say, we bonded.”

Steve’s face falls and he pulls a leg onto the couch as he sinks further into it. Natasha frowns, reaching out to touch his shin.

“I was kidding. Look, I was a blank slate to him. He doesn’t _really_ know me,” she says. “He still doesn’t know what to expect from you. Do you still think of him as the guy you knew before all this or who he is now? It’s in his face every time he looks at you.”

“I know who he is now.”

“Do you? Because I think he’s still figuring it out himself.”

“I know, I just-”

“You’ve got to give him some space for him to decide who he’s going to be.”

“I know!” he yells.

Natasha yanks her hand back, looking shocked for a fraction of a second and then steeling herself, pulling away from him in more ways than one.

“I mean, I wasn’t even around today,” he whispers, bending over his knees, his nose stinging once more.

Natasha waits a moment and then scoots closer to him again, laying a hand on his back.

“You’re right, I’m sorry, that’s not fair,” she says.

“No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled at you,” he says, looking up at her before returning his face to his hands.

“I just meant you can’t be sure when he’s not sure.”

He nods and they sit in silence for a few minutes. The burning sensation in his nose and eyes doesn’t subside.

“I wake up 70 years in the future. I think he’s dead, there’s seven decades of world history I’ve missed but am still subject to the consequences, and pretty much everyone I knew is dead.” He stops and takes a shuddering breath. “If I’d just died in the plane like I was supposed to...”

“And where would that leave Bucky?” Natasha asks, firm but not harsh. “He would still be here, 70 years away from the world he was born into and he’d probably still be under Hydra’s control. Not to mention all the people that would have been killed if not for-”

“Yeah, alright, I get it.” His voice is rough, but lacks conviction. Again, she’s right. “He wasn’t supposed to be here.”

Natasha bends over, hand on his shoulder and watches him until he meets her eyes.

“I know, but you’re both here. And while you missed all 70 years of history, he didn’t. He’s getting pieces of it back and it’s not pretty, _I know_. Right now we need to show him it’s going to be okay. He needs to know that you don’t think of him as the same person as before, so he can change. We have to acknowledge the trauma he’s been through and give him time to process. He has to heal.”

Steve lets out a shaky breath, then another that’s steadier.

“I get it,” he repeats. He stands and paces for a moment, hands on his hips, but shoulders deflated.

“You need to heal too,” she says from her seat on the couch. She’s drawn her legs up and is resting her hands on her feet.

“What?” he says, looking up.

“You thought you died making sure Hydra would die with you and now it turns out they never really went away. And they’ve actually been controlling the department you’ve been working for practically since waking up. Both times you thought you were doing what was right. _I thought_ I was doing right this time,” she says, bitterness filling her words. “But turns out it was Hydra all along. When you woke up you were stripped of the world you lived in. Now you’ve got someone from that world back, but Hydra’s manipulated him too. It’s not the same, it’ll never be the same and you have to process that. You get to heal too.”

Steve takes a deep breath, completely steady again.

“I understand what you’re saying, but I’m fine,” he says.

“You’re allowed to not be okay, Steve. Be gentle with yourself.”

Steve can’t look at her to say goodnight before he heads to bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Snow day yesterday! Thanks for taking the chance on this in-progress fic. Best wishes and happy new year!


	6. Chapter 6

_Steve is on the train, dirt-caked cargo stacked up around him, and over there, a gaping hole where a wall should be. It’s so empty, where is everyone? The silence after a gunshot hangs in the air. He’s here on a mission, but he can’t remember what he’s supposed to be doing. Is he looking for someone? The wind picks up outside the hole, whistling, calling to him. He stands on the edge and then he’s falling except he’s also watching himself fall. There’s screaming, screaming-_

His eyes shoot open, the covers thrown away. He’s sweating, but the screams are not his own and they haven’t stopped.

“Bucky?”

The dream echoing in his head, numbing his thoughts, he flies across the hall and throws the door open.

“Bucky. Hey, hey, hey. It’s okay,” he says, stepping up to the bed. His hand reaches out to shake his friend’s shoulder, but retracts before touching him. Bucky gasps, big gulping breaths as he yanks himself up out of the nightmare. He presses his eyes into the crook of his arm, his hand tightening around his metal shoulder, and a sob escapes him.

“Bucky?” Steve whispers.

Bucky jerks around to look at Steve. His hair is flat, sticking to the back of his neck. His eyes widen and a sharp intensity flares in them that burns Steve like hot coals.

“Get out!” he yells, voice cracking before desperation and anger take over. “Leave me alone, get out!” He shoves a hand at Steve, pushing him away easily in Steve’s shock.

Shame floods Steve’s veins, drawing up through his back until he turns and runs from the room. It’s like he’s done something awful, forbidden, seeing Bucky in this vulnerable moment. But all he wanted to do was help, to make it stop. The door slams shut behind him, and his whole body jerks away from the sound. His eyes burn, filling with tears before clearing again. He slides to the floor, feeling as if he’s watching himself in his dream again, using a hand on the carpet to lower his back against the wall.

On the other side of the door are new sounds, shaking breaths and long pauses before they come again. Steve pulls his knees up to his chest, resting his head on his arms.

Natasha finds him when dawn is breaking, hints of white lightening the grey room. She sits down next to him, her hand wrapping in a familiar way around his ankle.

“Rough night?” Her voice is soft, somehow not breaking the silence held in the air.

Steve doesn’t respond, he knows she won’t push him. Her hand moves from his ankle to his hair, and she runs her fingers lovingly through it.

“Sometimes we think it’s best to be alone. I don’t know about now,” she says, looking towards the closed door, “but sometimes it really is.” Upon standing she taps his shoulder and says, “Let’s go sit somewhere else.”

Steve rolls his head in his arms, stretching his neck before standing to join her. They go back to the common area, legs entangled from opposite sides of the couch. Natasha flips through the television channels while the sky beyond the windows continues to brighten. Steve’s pretty sure she doesn’t know what happened and he can’t decide whether or not to tell her. That sense of shame sits like a peach pit in his stomach, refusing to soften even as he drifts back into sleep.

…

Bucky sits on the bed, hand gripping the edge as if it’s the only thing keeping him from falling into a deep void. A shaky sob comes up, twisting his face. He remembers some more of his first experiences with Hydra, as a prisoner of war and Zola, and later, when he was dug out of the snow. He remembers Past Bucky’s screams, those yelled obscenities, and resistance both aggressive and passive, but so far no crying. He’s ashamed by the tears he can’t control even as his dream comes back, tearing into him.

_He’s so cold, his muscles protest every movement, and it feels like needles are pricking his skin from all sides._

_Wipe him._

_He’s still warming up when they dump him in the chair, needing only a suggestive push to have him fall back into it so they can strap him down. It’s hard to keep his eyes open, like opening them underwater._

_Bite down._

_The electricity prickles down his still damp body, but he hardly notices for the pain in his head._

_He screams and screams._

_The first time they did this, he still remembered Steve. Why does he remember Steve now?_

_Wipe him and start over._

_He doesn’t remember when the last straw broke, when he started letting a lot of things happen to him without trying to stop it._

_He’s still screaming._

_You let them do this to you, someone accuses._

_When he manages to open his eyes, he sees himself in a crisp, new uniform, yelling at him to fight back. And then Steve’s there too, hand on the switch, turning the power up, and saying, you should have fought more. I died for you._

When he comes back to himself, his knees are shaking, and his face is newly wet.

Is Steve still outside? He wants to hear him say something to counter the echoes of his dream. He fought for so long, as hard as he could, and it wasn’t enough. Steve died trying to save them all from Hydra, and Bucky let them turn him into a weapon.

He lays down on the ground, so much more solid than the bed, and pulls the covers down over him, letting the air turn hot and stale.

.

Knocking on the door wakes him up some time later. He has no idea what time it is or how long he’s been asleep, and it’s terribly disorienting sitting up from the floor instead of the bed. Bucky shakes the blanket off and goes to the door, because that’s what you’re supposed to do when someone knocks. It stings keeping his eyes open. Numb fingers rest against the door handle, but don’t turn it. Steve must be really angry with him and he knows he has to apologize. He hates that it’s important to him whether or not Steve’s angry with him.

Before he can decide, Steve starts talking from the other side of the door. Bucky’s stomach rumbles at the mention of food.

“It’s okay that you’re feeling bad right now,” Steve says. “Well, it’s not okay, I mean I’m sorry you’re feeling bad. If there was some button I could push that would make the pain disappear please know I would push it.”

Bucky’s fingers tighten around the door handle.

“Anyway, uh, look you don’t have to act a certain way just because I’m here. I’m going to try and listen more, and give you space when you want it. You don’t have to justify your actions to me or anyone else here.”

He snorts, of course he has to act a certain way. If Steve knew everything he’d done, he would hate him, throw him out. It hurts that he knows he’ll have to leave before it gets to that point. Physically, he’s feeling better than he has in weeks and he thinks that as soon as his arm is repaired he can leave.

Bucky feels Steve leave and he opens his eyes to stare at the door, not realizing how hard he had been clenching them shut. He opens it an inch. He was right, Steve’s gone, but he’s left a plate of food on the floor. He takes the plate back to the bed, sitting cross-legged to balance it on his legs. If Steve made him breakfast, he can’t be that mad, but on the other hand he’s not good for anything if he starves.

His head aches with the memory of stiff legs and raw feet, denied food while his stomach cramped and forced him to hunch as he walked for days on roughly poured concrete. They didn’t need him to be useful then.

He eats everything on the overflowing plate, the eggs warm and fluffy.

.

The sun’s just set when he gets up to go to the bathroom, the water turning a dark, dehydrated yellow under him. He steps back towards his room, the blanket and plate still on the floor, lights off and curtains drawn, and finds he doesn’t want to go back into the cramped space. Instead he goes into the hall, hearing a soft, constant stream of noise coming from the common room. There’s conversation and stressful music. Why would anyone play this for pleasure? As he approaches, blue light flickers out into the hall and he realizes what he took for a radio must be a television.

Steve’s sitting on the couch, fingers holding his spot in a black book, eyes fixed to the screen. Walking around behind him, he sits down on the other side, and Steve honestly jumps when he sinks into the couch, shoving the book in between the cushions behind him. Guilty of something.

“Buck, hi,” Steve says, turning the volume down on the t.v.

“Hey,” he replies. There’s a pile of unraveled bandages on the coffee table, meant to protect your hands while boxing and he notices for the first time the smell of old sweat.

“How are you?”

Bucky holds a deep breath while he thinks. In the time since he screamed at Steve this morning he feels…

“Better.”

“I’m glad.” Steve fingers the wraps, but lets them slide out of his hands.

“How are you?” Bucky asks.

“I’m fine,” Steve says a little too fast.

“I’m glad.” He can’t help the shade of a smile that works up on him. Steve smiles a little too, letting out the breath he was holding. Maybe that means he’s not unforgivably angry with him. “Thanks for the food.”

“No problem, I made too much this morning.”

Yeah right, he thinks, if that was his leftovers Bucky can’t imagine the amount of eggs he actually ate. He settles further into the couch. Even though he’s been laying down for most of the day he doesn’t feel antsy like he was expecting. He does feel strange sitting here, like he’s supposed to be doing something. But what?

“Hey Bucky,” Steve says, cautious, “I don’t know if you heard what I said earlier, but you got the food so I thought maybe you did. Then you know I’m not going to force you to do anything. It’s completely your choice, there’s no right or wrong answer…” As if he realizes he’s rambling he takes a breath and then says, “Would you be interested in seeing a therapist?” The words fly out of Steve’s mouth and he chokes on the end of the question.

Bucky feels every muscle in his body contract simultaneously. He’s not even sure he’s breathing while Steve goes on and on.

“I saw one for awhile, after I woke up. It helped me adjust a bit, process what happened. 70 years isn’t a small thing and I had to...mourn the people who were gone when I...Lots of veterans...I don’t know if you remember what it was like in the 40’s, but it’s not like that anymore. People see therapists all the time for lots of different things. My friend Sam, you’ve met him, he works at the VA with veterans, giving them space to talk in a group, so something like that is also available I guess.”

Bucky stares him down until he stops talking, then leans his head against the back of the couch so his eyes are pointed at the ceiling. What would a therapist tell him that he doesn’t already know. _Hey kid, your brain is fried, sorry about that, but that’s kind of what happens when it’s constantly subjected to powerful electricity._ No thanks.

Yet, Steve’s voice isn’t assertive, his ramblings make him seem more nervous than anything, like he’s afraid Bucky’s going to attack him for asking. He hates when Steve is scared of him, and then he hates when Steve isn’t scared of him. Steve probably has the scars to remind him he should be scared. The couch feels harder than it did a minute ago.

“I’ll think about it,” he says at last.

Thankfully, Steve accepts this and turns back toward the t.v. as if to give him a moment of privacy. After a spew of rather loud and obtrusive commercials, he feels his muscles relax and he takes a closer look at what’s playing.

“What is this?” he asks.

“Chopped,” Steve replies. “These chefs are given weird ingredients and they have to make a meal out of it before the timer goes off. There seems to be a lot of shows like this.”

“Huh…”

“Are you hungry? I can find something,” Steve offers. Bucky shakes his head, no.

They finish watching the episode and commercials start playing again before the next one.

Bucky remembers... sitting in a darkened theater with Steve, laughing at something he’s said. The picture on the screen is grainy, like he didn’t pay enough attention to remember what was playing. Steve’s face, his presence, the broken spring poking his leg from the torn cushion, this is all clear as water. Steve was so much smaller then, not much more than skin and bone.

“I don’t remember television like this,” Bucky says. His voice sounds far away to his ears. There’s people tasting the food on the show, but he doesn’t remember watching them cook.

“Me neither,” Steve says, but Bucky’s not sure they really mean the same thing.

Would Steve remember what the movie was? If he knew the title would he remember the picture? He considers asking, but he’s not ready to broach Brooklyn. How many years had Steve been in the ice when he was sitting in that motel room with a rifle, staring blankly at the television after a mission.

Steve gets up to retire, having not slept the entire day away, and Bucky feels compelled to say something.

“I’m sorry, about this morning,” he says, lips barely moving.

Steve pauses and turns back around. “It’s alright. Your response was normal, and I shouldn’t have busted in like that. I’m sorry.”

Bucky nods and Steve continues out the door, and right as he crosses the threshold Bucky says, “I’m still sorry, if I hurt you.” He thinks he sees Steve start to pause, but he can’t really be sure.

…

Tony shows up at breakfast the next morning, draping himself over the back of Steve’s chair and peering around to see his profile.

“Would you like to go ahead and call me the Most Brilliant scientist you know or should I?” Tony says with his usual bravado.

“Tony, you’re one of the only scientists I know. And you’re hovering,” Steve says.

“Fine, fine, I can do it.” He moves to the other side of the table and places his right hand over his chest. “I am the Most Brilliant scientist you know.’

Bucky is watching with a strange, calculating look in his eye, spoonful of oatmeal suspended halfway from his bowl to his mouth.

“So that means…” Steve prompts.

“I have fixed Barnes’ arm,” Tony says.

“Did you ever even sleep?” Steve asks.

“Well, a bit. Pepper convinced me when she got back from her conference.”

“Pepper’s back?”

Tony nods with an almost shy smile.

The corners of Steve’s mouth twitch downward in a ‘who would’ve thought’ expression.

“If you two gentlemen are all done here, we can go take a look,” Tony says.

“Actually-” but Steve’s initial protest has no effect on Tony as he grabs an apple and starts back toward the elevator. Steve exchanges a look with Bucky and then they both follow after him.

Even without breaking the ice on their conversation last night, the morning has been relaxed and overall, Bucky seems much more receptive to Steve although for the life of him Steve can’t figure out why.

The lab looks like a tornado blew through, spewing wire, bits of metal, and take out boxes everywhere. A carton of chicken fried rice rests precariously close to the edge of a stool. Steve slides it to the middle as he walks by.

The arm lies on a table off to the side, tools left scattered around it. Bucky walks up, taking it in for a long time. He reaches out to touch it, but stops before his hand meets the metal.

“Whenever you’re ready to go we can fit it back on you,” Tony says.

Bucky really does touch the metal this time, running his fingers down the bicep. Something sad and unknowable comes over his face, dragging him deeper into himself.

“Bucky,” Steve says, careful, “you don’t have to have it back if you don’t want it.” Steve thought his friend would be thrilled, but now he sees his mistake, understands that this might represent something bigger and more sinister than just an arm.

Bucky flicks his eyes up at him, looking as if he’d forgotten there were other people in the room. His fingers slip off the crook of the arm’s elbow.

“Not yet,” he says, quiet but firm.

Tony nods, immediately seeming to understand.

“I’ll keep it safe and good as ever. If or when you feel ready, just let me know,” he says.

Bucky swallows, tucking trembling fingers into his pocket.

“I’m just gonna-” He jerks his head back toward the door, voice huskier than before. “Thank you.” Then he’s gone.

Steve’s not sure how to interpret that. His voice wasn’t angry, and there was that dark sadness on his face, but sincere gratitude in his words. Wanting to give Bucky a few minutes to do whatever he needed to do, Steve finds an uncovered stool and sits down.

“Thanks a lot Tony. This is incredible.”

Tony feigns surprise. “Was that almost a compliment about my engineering abilities?”

“You know I respect your abilities.”

“Thanks, Grandpa,” Tony says with a hint of a smile. Steve can see the exhaustion catching up, weighing down his eyelids. As his friend picks up a tool and fidgets with it, trying to think of something to do, it occurs to Steve there might be a reason he’s spent the past few days working non-stop when he could have taken all the time he wanted.

“How are you, Tony,” he asks.

“Hmm? Oh I’m fine.” He sets the tool back down and pulls up a tablet to stare at. “How are you? Accommodations adequate? Because I know the owner and I’m happy to pass along complaints.”

“Tony.”

At length, Tony turns off the tablet and looks up at him over his glasses.

“Are you okay?” Steve asks once he has his attention.

Tony sighs through his nose.

“I will be,” he says.

“Anything I can do?”

“No,” Tony says, shaking his head. “Just take care of Barnes.”

Steve thinks it’s about time for him to leave when he remembers.

“Tony do you know any good therapists? I mean, any that might actually understand what he’s going through.”

“I’m sure I can dig up a couple of names,” Tony says, perking up a little with the prospect of something new to do. “Did you want to talk to one about Barnes?”

“Not exactly, it’s for Bucky. I asked him about it and he said he’d think about talking to one. I’d like to have some people we can contact if he decides he wants to do it.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Tony says.

Steve thanks him again and takes the elevator back down to their floor. He’s worried Bucky has isolated himself somewhere, but instead finds him in the sitting room surrounded by boxes and two more familiar faces. Natasha lays draped across one of the chairs, pointing at things for Pepper to pick up. Bucky looks up at Steve, eyes wide. Between the boxes and the chatter he looks a little like a trapped animal. He tries giving Bucky a reassuring smile and he doesn’t bolt so that counts for something.

“Hey Pepper, it’s good to see you,” Steve says, turning to her.

“Steve!” She comes over and gives him a light hug, then takes a step back to look him over. “I’m sorry I didn’t come see you two when I first got back, the trip was exhausting.”

“Don’t worry about it. I hope it was a good trip.”

“Oh yeah, productive. Anyway, I’ve got some stuff for you and Bucky here.” She crosses her arms and nods toward the stacks of boxes.

“I see that.” He looks over at Bucky and smiles again. He doesn’t look quite as tense as he did a minute ago.

“I got lots of different options for you guys to try. Keep anything you like, and I can send back anything you don’t.” As usual, her voice is calm, authoritative, and cheerful such that your first impression is to do whatever she asks of you.

“Did you help pick these out?” Steve asks Natasha. She’s still comfortable in her chair, feet resting on the armrest of the chair next to her.

“Of course I did. Start with that box, I think that’s the one,” she says, pointing.

Bucky has his hand still stuffed down in his pants pocket. He’s looking at the floor as if he’s afraid they’re going to call on him to answer a difficult question. Steve thinks he understands exactly how out of place Bucky must feel right now. Practically all the clothes he owns he bought from one store the week Fury finally let him out of the complex and he hasn’t seen any reason to change his wardrobe since.

“Hey Buck, help me with this box?”

Bucky looks up at his name and walks over. Kneeling on the floor, he digs his fingers under the packing tape and rips it off while Steve holds the box down. Inside are soft, cotton shirts. Together they rip open more boxes and soon the room is covered in a layer of clothes.

For all Nat’s teasing about getting Steve to dress more “loud and proud” as she said, there’s nothing outrageous in the boxes. In fact, a lot of things are exactly what he’d wear: khakis and jeans, breathable workout shirts, and even a brown leather jacket. It’s supple under his fingers and fits his frame perfectly.

“Do you like it? I picked it out special for you Rogers,” Natasha says.

“Thanks Nat, it’s great,” he says, his mouth perked in a warm smile.

Steve pulls over a box no one’s opened yet and breaks through its cardboard. From its depths he pulls out a pair of strappy sandals. He holds them up and Natasha claims them immediately.

“Are the boots in there too? Bring me the box.” She holds out her hands and Steve hands it to her. She sits up, swinging her legs around so she can go through it. Underneath the sandals are a pair of high heeled boots Steve pictures her wearing at a casual party. She tries them on and Steve sits down in the other chair, waiting patiently while Bucky takes his time. He knows most of this is for Bucky, to let him choose for himself what he’s going to wear for the first time in probably 70 years.

It seems like Bucky starts to enjoy himself after a while. He feels the different textures between his fingers and compares colors without any predictable criteria. Pepper asks if he’d like help changing shirts, waiting until he says yes and hands one to her. Steve tries to give them some privacy, but he can’t help stealing a look at Bucky’s shoulder. The change is startling. Other than discolored scar tissue, there’s no redness and no swelling. He can’t see any signs of infection, so he knows Bucky must be taking his prescriptions. Now that he’s thinking about it, this is one of the changes he’s seen but not understood. Bucky’s face is no longer held tight with the anticipation of pain and once more Steve is filled with gratitude for everyone who has helped them in the past week.

Every time Bucky changes, he takes the time to move, twisting and bending, walking and turning. Sometimes he makes a face right before pulling the shirts off over his head. Those get dropped piteously behind the chair.

Eventually Bucky seems to have narrowed the multitude of boxes into a much smaller pile with what he likes. Among it are pairs of jeans and sweatpants (no khakis), some long sleeved shirts both button up and pull over, t-shirts, workout clothes, a couple of hats, and some sturdy boots. Steve almost forgot about the boots, because Bucky hasn’t taken them off since first putting them on.

The last thing he tries is a jacket. It’s dark, with a sturdy mesh of fabric that follows his frame beautifully and still allows movement.

Natasha says something in russian and Steve thinks he actually catches Bucky blush.

He quips back at her and then in english says, “I don’t know, isn’t it kind of…” He shrugs his shoulders.

Natasha points to the left sleeve.

“If it’s bothering you, either of the sleeves can be zipped off,” she says.

Bucky perks up a little at this, feeling the zipper with his right hand.

“Steve?” he says, turning to him.

This startles Steve and for a second. He thinks he’s missed something, but no, Bucky really just asked for his opinion and is now watching him expectantly.

“I uh-,” _oh come on_ , “I think it looks great. Don’t you agree Pepper?”

Pepper nods. “Oh yes, it looks fantastic, but that’s not a good enough reason to wear it if you’re not comfortable,” she says.

Bucky digs his hand into a pocket, rolling his shoulders and pulling at the collar.

“Actually, I think it’s growing on me,” he says at last.

“Excellent, well I think that’s everything,” Pepper says, looking around the room. Steve starts folding some of the unwanted clothes on his lap while they organize the boxes. Bucky steps closer to Steve.

“I can really keep all these?” Bucky asks, gesturing to his pile.

“Yeah, they’re yours,” Steve says. He’s gotten most of the clothes in the general vicinity so he moves to the floor to reach more. Bucky sits down next to him and starts folding t-shirts so Steve takes pants.

“I didn’t pay for them.”

“Well no, but Tony did,” Steve says.

“Why?” Bucky asks.

“He thought it was important for us to have some clothes if we’re going to stay here for a while.”

“But why, I don’t deserve any of these things. And not from Stark I don’t think.” His voice gets quieter at the end, his brow furrows, and his eyes get a glazed look. Then he hangs his head as if inspecting the shirt beneath his stilled hand.

“Memory isn’t always reliable,” Steve says.

“It’s enough,” Bucky says from behind his hair.

Steve’s finished all the pants and starts on long sleeves.

“You’re a human being, Bucky. You deserve to have clothes to wear, a place to sleep, food to eat-”

Bucky is quiet for a few seconds, licking his lips like he does when he’s considering something.

“I’m not sure much humanity is left in me,” he says at last. Steve hears shame and a sadness in his voice that’s different than before. It’s a private, resigned sort of sadness and he feels the crack in his heart start to widen.

“You look pretty human to me, no alien antenna,” Steve jokes. He doesn’t look up and he thinks he’s said the wrong thing, but then from his periphery he sees Bucky’s hand start folding shirts again.

Once the boxes have been repacked, everyone falls into a comfortable lull. Bucky grabs half of his clothes and Steve grabs the other, laying them on his dresser for Bucky to put away as he wishes. After he puts his own clothes away he comes back to find Bucky hovering in his doorway across the hall.

“I’m going to take a nap. I’m tired,” Bucky says. Indeed, he looks enervated by the morning’s activities like he’s being held up by a very thin string.

“Okay.”

 Bucky slides into his room and shuts the door, but then opens it again enough to show his face.

“Please tell Pepper I said thank you,” he says. The door clicks behind him.

Steve smiles and takes a moment to think of what they’ve done today. Bucky made a lot of decisions. He remembers how tired he used to get at first, when people asked him questions over and over again about what happened when he went down in the ice. They would ask him what he wanted to eat after these “interviews” as they called them, and he barely had the energy to say he didn’t care. He was so tired at first and he’d already slept for the whole 70 years.

His heart doesn’t feel like it’s breaking so much anymore. The initial ache has subsided.

Pepper is sitting next to Natasha talking in hushed voices, both with serious expressions on their face. They look up when Steve enters the room.

“Is Bucky okay?” Peppers asks as she notices he’s not with Steve.

“Yeah, he was just a little tired and wanted to take a break. I’m sure he’ll be out before dinner tonight. He told me to tell you thank you,” he says.

She laughs good naturedly.

“He’s welcome.”

“Thanks from me too. This was really great.”

“Hey I helped,” Natasha interrupts.

“Thanks to you too Nat.”

She nods, satisfied.

“You’re welcome too,” Pepper says. “It was Tony’s suggestion in the first place. It wasn’t too much was it?” Her voice tilts with worry.

“No, I think he enjoyed himself.”

“Plus, I enjoyed myself,” Natasha says.

There’s a beat and Steve gestures between them and asks, “is everything okay?”

Pepper jumps in. “Yes, we just needed to talk about some things. We’ll finish later?”

Natasha nods, smile faltering.

“Alright well I better make sure Tony is also taking a rest and then I’ve got a report to write for the financial team. It’s been fun; I’ll join you for dinner as well if that’s alright,” Pepper says.

“Absolutely,” Steve says at the same time Natasha says “of course.”

Pepper gives Natasha’s shoulder a squeeze before taking her leave and Natasha leaves a few minutes later.

Steve knows she’s had at least one previous experience with the Winter Soldier, because she told him about it, and now he’s realizing there may have been more to the story she didn’t tell. He feels awful for not thinking there might be unwanted memories brought on by Bucky’s presence, even though he’s not the Winter Soldier anymore. He wants to take care of all his friends, but he doesn’t know how to do it.

.

In his room, Bucky takes a shaky breath. His arm is fixed. He could have Tony reattach it and then he could be out of here by morning. Everyone is being so nice to him today, but it won’t last. If they knew even a fraction of the things he did...well, he knows this is _too good_ to last. He still knows he’ll have to leave before they find out, but when he looked at the arm lying there on the table it didn’t seem real. And he had an unreasonable thought that if he didn’t put it back on, the whole thing wouldn’t actually be real. Though even now he feels the place where metal meets skin on his shoulder.

_Just a few more days_ , he thinks, _just a few more_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for being so patient waiting for this chapter! Let me know in the comments what you think and although the draft of this fic is complete, I'd love to hear things you'd like to see happen. Happy Summer!


	7. Chapter 7

Bucky does stay a few more days, long enough that he has to do a load of laundry. He wakes up early one morning and gathers all his clothes into an old shopping bag before tentatively asking Jarvis where he can find a washing machine. He’s getting used to asking questions of, the building and having them immediately answered. He still doesn’t understand what or who Jarvis is, but is starting to accept its (his?) presence nonetheless. Turns out there’s a washer and dryer on his floor, though in an offset corner so it’s not readily visible from the hallways.

By the time he’s folded everything and put it away, the sun is high in the sky. Natasha has already had breakfast and stalked off somewhere, and Pepper even came by under the guise of checking to make sure they had enough food, though Bucky guessed she really came by to feel him out some more. He doesn’t have much to say. His thoughts have been tangled and confusing since he decided to hang around. It’s like there’s a directive he’s ignoring in favor of what he wants, a feeling of deep-seated disobedience. Each time he tries to unravel the thoughts, he breaks out in cold sweats.

It’s past lunchtime and Steve still hasn’t come out of his room. Bucky stood earlier with his ear to the door and heard rustling sheets so he’s pretty sure Steve is still there. _Maybe he’s sick?_ He disgusts himself with his deep concern, reminding himself he can’t get attached. And yet he can’t shake his worry.

.

Steve wakes from a grey, dreamless place, his head and limbs impossibly heavy. He reaches for his phone and that basic action exhausts him. It seems to take forever to grab it, check the time, and put it back down. His arm collapses back onto the mattress, fingers dangling over the edge. Even breathing takes energy he doesn’t have.

_I have to get up,_ he tells himself. _I need to go eat breakfast, say good morning to Bucky, maybe go work out._ None of these thoughts are very motivating and finally Steve lets them slip away like water between his fingers. He turns back under the sheets, allowing the bed to cradle a body he can’t hold up on his own. Sleep settles onto him and like his sheets, he desperately yanks it over his head in an effort to stop existing for a while.

He wakes up sometime later, an orange glow peeking from behind the window blinds. Late afternoon most likely. A loud breath escapes him as he curls onto his side, exacerbating the dry, cracked inside of his mouth. It’s then he notices a misplaced shadow over in the corner.

“Bucky?” he asks the familiar shadow. Why is Bucky standing in the corner of his room?

Bucky shifts his weight between his spread feet, coming more into the light. With his right hand grasping his left shoulder and strong stance, Steve recognizes this from his apartment. Ready for offense or defense, unsure if there’s a threat or not.

“What are you doing here?” Steve rasps.

“You didn’t get up this morning,” Bucky says. His hair is tucked behind his ears and his face is unshaven.

Steve lets himself sink back into the mattress as a reply.  

“I brought-” Bucky stops and grabs something off the dresser, and after a moment’s hesitation lays it next to Steve on the bed. There’s a sandwich in a plastic bag and a bottle of water, just slightly cool to the touch.

Steve sits up to gulp down water, amazed at how good it can taste. Bucky watches him the whole time, giving him a surprisingly encouraging nod. Truthfully he’s not very hungry, but he’s touched Bucky brought him something so he unwraps half the sandwich and takes a couple of bites. balonga and cheese, a staple of his when they finally let him get his own place after he woke up due to its familiarity, not that Bucky would remember. He reseals what’s left of the sandwich and leaves it on the nightstand for later.

“Thank you.”

Bucky nods once and then Steve sleeps some more.  

The next time Steve wakes up there’s no more light coming from behind the blinds. Well, no sunlight, anyway. As always, the ever-present blue glow of the city seeps through. He stands to use the bathroom, muscles stiff and movements mechanical. Bucky is sitting in an armchair in the corner, one leg resting by the chair and the other sticking far out into the room. Bucky doesn’t move or say anything, and when Steve’s eyes fully adjust he sees it’s because Bucky’s asleep. His head is back, tilted to one side, his breathing deep and even. It must be later than Steve thought.

_Has he been here all day?_ Steve wonders. He really hadn’t thought his absence would be missed.

Bucky’s still asleep when he returns. Steve’s surprised he hasn’t woken up. He knows that even with only his army training Bucky would usually wake up if anything moved. A defense mechanism that took its toll on his body due to lack of deep sleep.

_Does this mean he feels safe? Secure enough to sleep when other people are moving about._ Steve sure hopes so. He unfolds an extra blanket and moves to lay it over his friend, starting with his legs and draping it over his chest. Bucky takes in a deep breath, escaping him in a huff, but then he settles further back in the chair. It’s the most peaceful Steve’s seen him, and the relaxed nature of his expression is beautiful. A smile tugs at Steve’s mouth. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he finishes his sandwich. The bread has turned dry even wrapped up, but the balogna is still juicy and soft. He no longer feels stuck. Time is moving for him again, allowing him to breathe and move without exhaustion. He briefly considers leaving to do something, but _what if Bucky wakes up and finds him gone?_ Steve doubts it would affect Bucky at all, but there must be some reason Bucky’s still here in the chair, and Steve doesn’t want to upset that. He lies back down, finding it much harder this time to quiet his thoughts enough to sleep.

In the morning, Steve is alone. The blanket he laid over Bucky is in a heap on the otherwise empty chair. He almost stumbles getting out of bed, thinking he still had to put in the extra effort to move as he did yesterday. His stomach grumbles loudly and painfully, forcing Steve to stop until the it passes. One sandwich for a super soldier isn’t nearly what his body needs to keep its elevated metabolism happy. He forgoes the shower and shave he’d planned and instead heads directly to the kitchen. Bucky is sitting at the table, idly turning his spoon in a bowl of oatmeal.

“Steve,” he says, surprised but not unwelcoming. He sits up a little straighter, spoon forgotten.

“Morning Bucky,” Steve replies, careful to keep his eyes turned toward the table. He serves himself some oatmeal, adding walnuts and dried fruit for texture.

Bucky takes a bite of his own congealed cereal, eyes never leaving Steve. After a few minutes of silence, Bucky puts down his spoon again. There’s a crease between his eyebrows that gets Steve’s attention.

“What’s it like?” Bucky asks.

“What’s what like?” Steve replies.

“Yesterday. Why didn’t you get out of bed?” There’s genuine curiosity in his voice like he really just doesn’t understand but wants to. Steve thinks he hears a hint of concern as well, but then again he’s probably reading too far into things.

Steve eyes the ceiling, as if an easy explanation will appear there.

“It’s like...being forced to watch paint dry, except you can’t zone out, because you care so much about the paint and what happens to it. You know you should be able to look away, but instead you can only sit there and watch.”

Bucky nods, considering this.

“And sometimes,” Steve says with a bit of a sigh, “I just don’t feel like caring about the paint.”

“And you don’t have to watch the paint dry if you’re asleep? Sleeping makes it stop?”

Steve nods, hoping Bucky isn’t taking the paint part too literally. Then, seeming satisfied with this answer, Bucky goes back to his breakfast.

.

Bucky spends more time with Steve in the following days, working out in the gym together and reading books on world history while Steve reads the newspaper and briefing reports from...well Bucky has no idea actually. He doesn’t know a whole lot about the current situation, but he’s pretty sure S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn’t exist anymore. He doesn’t know who Steve works for, or if his “work” is more of the freelance sort.

Slowly, he starts to ask questions. How did they meet back in Brooklyn? When did he enlist in the Army?  Memories come back as Steve talks, memories of their relationship and what James Buchanan Barnes was like before the war, his personality, his likes and dislikes. It’s true, he’s a different person now, but for the first time that man from the 40’s doesn’t feel like a complete stranger, more like a distant relative. His dreams were so much simpler back then and his world was so much smaller. He catches himself at times slipping into old mannerisms and forces himself to quit. It feels too much like an imitation, and he bears the culpability of James’ death like a heavy stone around his neck. Steve never comments on these “imitations” much to his relief.

The first question he regrets asking is one about his family. He only had fuzzy pictures of them in his head before he asked. After, not only do the pictures and memories come back, but so do the deep-seated emotions that can only come from family. He retreats to his bed that afternoon ignoring the concerned stares from those around him.

The problem is he doesn’t just remember, but _feels_ the ache in his chest when he told his sister he was enlisting. She understood the responsibility he felt to his country, that so many others felt at that time, but she still cried. Not big, sloppy tears, in fact it had taken him a while to notice, sitting side by side on the fire escape. They were the kind of tears that nothing could make better, but still he put an arm around her.

Bucky tracks Steve down in the library the next day. He hesitates outside the door, hearing that he’s on the phone.

“Really, Sam it’s fine, I understand,” Steve says.

“No, everything is _okay_ here. How many times have I canceled for work?”

“It’s not different!”

“Just come when you get the chance, alright?”

“Yeah, you too.”

Steve sighs and pushes the phone back into the pocket of his pants. One hand quickly rubs at his face before he sits up straight and notices Bucky who’s stepped into the doorway.

“Was that Falcon- uh Sam?” Bucky asks, nodding toward Steve’s pocket.

“Yeah, he was going to visit soon, but work came up.” Steve shrugs like ‘what can you do’. “Hey how do you know we call him Falcon?”

“I like to research the people I almost manage to kill.” He tries to make it sound like a joke, but it comes out flat. “You left a file out about him,” he confesses.

Steve nods, distracted apparently.

Bucky steps into the room but continues to keep his distance. It feels like the opportunity to ask his question is passing as Steve’s eyes start to glaze over and Bucky’s heart starts pounding while he decides whether to speak up or not.

“What happened to my family?” he finally chokes out, cheeks flushing slightly.

Steve focuses his attention back on his friend. He looks scared, or not scared, but like he’s desperately trying to find a way to circumvent the conversation. After some more feet shuffling he seems to give up, visibly deflating.

“Your youngest sister lives in Indiana. She moved back after your parents passed away. She has a son who lives close and grandchildren,” Steve admits.

Bucky feels strangely apathetic at the announcement.

“Did you look her up?” he asks.

“She reached out to me actually,” Steve says.

“Oh.”

“When it went public that I was alive, I guess she called S.H.I.E.L.D. over and over until someone let her talk to me. She asked if I knew for sure what happened to you. When you fell from the train-” here he pauses, looking up to gauge Bucky’s reaction, “your family received your second death certificate from the army. I guess she never really trusted them after the first one turned out to be false, but she also never really had an alternate explanation until I was thawed out. She thought you might have been with me.” Steve looks down and picks at a hangnail, a nervous action.

“You told her I died,” Bucky says without malice.

“I thought- I mean I didn’t have any reason- I haven’t talked to her since.”

“So she still doesn’t know.” At this he does feel a twinge deep down, of guilt and...longing.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Steve says. “I wasn’t sure if you wanted to know.”

“It’s okay, I didn’t.” It comes out colder than he intended. “I don’t know what to do now.”

“She said your brother passed away a few years ago, and your older sister more recently,” Steve says, although he’s not sure Bucky’s listening anymore.

The twinge Bucky felt deep down has moved up to his spine, no longer connected to his emotions. It makes him shiver, though he does his best to hide the shaking by pressing his back against a bookcase. But it keeps moving until it explodes into sharp, stabbing pains in his head. It must show on his face, because Steve reaches for him.

“Are you okay?” Steve asks.

Bucky moves out from the bookcase and away from Steve’s touch, though he regrets it a moment later when the sharp pain turns into loud pounding.

“Headache,” he mumbles.

“Can I get you something?”

“No.” He sinks into the chair Steve had occupied moments prior, covering his eyes from the offending light as he lays his head back.

This isn’t the first headache like this he’s had, but it’s definitely becoming the worst. He knows he has to keep it together or else end up back with the doctor and her machine. If he could just make it to his room- but when he next tries to stand he grunts under a nauseating wave of dizziness and is forced to sit back down.

As if reading his mind Steve says, “I think I should take you to the doctor.”

“No, it’s nothing,” he insists, but the words sound weak even to his own ears.  

“Buck, please.”

He doesn’t fight back when Steve pulls his arm around his own shoulder and wraps his other arm around Bucky’s waist to haul him up. He’s sure he’s not much help, tripping over his own feet, and Steve bears most of his weight.

As soon as the nurse at the reception desks sees them step off the elevator she ushers them into a room where Bucky can lay down. Dr. Welch steps in just a few minutes later, her features an experienced calm. She reintroduces herself to the two of them and shakes Steve’s hand before turning all her attention to Bucky.

“What seems to be the problem today, Bucky?”

“Headache,” he mumbles.

“Sharp or dull?” she asks, seeming to sense that her patient can only form short responses at the moment.

“Switches.”

“Is this the first headache like this you’ve had.”

“No.”

“How long have they been going on?”

“Few days.”

“And are they the same each time or are they getting worse?”

“Worse,” he mutters.

“How long since this one started?”

It’s felt like an age to Bucky, the time lost in the pain and he remains silent.

“Only 10, maybe 15 minutes ago,” Steve pipes up shyly.

Dr. Welch nods and seems to consider her options.

“Alright Bucky, I’m going to get you some medicine for the pain, but I still think we should do a CT scan. Steve if you could please wait outside,” she says while holding the door open for him. Bucky can’t see Steve from where he’s lying, but there seems to be more time than necessary before the door closes again, leaving him alone. He couldn’t even get up to leave if he wanted to.

The doctor returns with two pills in a paper cup, a bottle of water, and some ice. He dry swallows the pills, but she insists he drink most of the water anyway. Then he lays back down with the ice to rest and hope the pain alleviates. On Dr. Welch’s third return, Bucky manages to sit up, crinkling the paper on the examination table. His limbs are heavy, as if he’s been through an arduous workout, but the pain in his head has thankfully subsided.

Dr. Welch looks genuinely happy with the improvement and stays to talk to him.

“About the CT scan,” she begins. Even tired as he is, Bucky feels all of his muscles flex and the hairs on his arms seem to stand up. Dr. Welch takes a casual step back and sits down on a stool when she sees his reaction, giving him some extra space. Still she exudes a perfect calm.

“I can’t force you to do any tests or treatments you don’t want to do,” she says. “Patients will sometimes sign papers giving me permission to control their treatment, but I won’t make you to sign that.”

Bucky’s fairly sure she’s telling the truth, but he’s learned from experience that just because someone _can’t_ do something doesn’t mean they won’t do it.

“My point is,” Dr. Welch continues, “I would like to do a CT scan of your brain to see if there are any obvious causes for your headaches. If something can be identified, we’ll be better equipped to treat it. I’d like you to come see the machine with me, and then decide whether to have the scan done. You can walk away at any time.”

Bucky just nods and slips down from the table to follow her. He believes her when she says he can walk away. Still, he notes possible exit routes as they walk. She takes him into another shining, white room and leads him over to a bed with a circle surrounding it.

“This is it,” she says, touching it gently.

Bucky examines it, stepping around to see the back of the circle. It’s the same backwards and forwards. The thin figure doesn’t remind him of the cryogenic chamber at all and he feels himself relax again. He nods again.

“I’ll do it.”

Dr. Welch gives him a beaming smile full of encouragement.

.

Back in the examination room, the doctor opens the scans on the computer.

“Do you see here, where it looks like the tissue has pulled away a bit, shrunk. And here where it’s much darker.” She points at different parts of the screen, without checking to see if Bucky’s watching. “The dark part usually indicates bleeding and cell death. I’m not sure about the other part. It might heal a bit on its own, but I won’t lie to you, a full recovery is unlikely, and it may be getting worse if the headaches are any indication. I’d like to send these to a neurologist, but only with your permission. Your identity will be kept anonymous of course.”

He signs the release of information form, teeth clenched. Anger boils up inside of him, not at his doctor, or even the scans themselves really, but knowing that doesn’t ease the emotion any. He’s filled with new rage for Hydra, for a world that let that monster grow, and even at the good ol’ US of A for not rescuing him even when their actions were logical. Most of all, he’s angry with himself. For letting it happen. For letting a lot of things happen and then thinking he could go back to a somewhat normal, if not secretive, life.

He allows Dr. Welch to schedule a one month follow up for the headaches and a six month follow up to do another scan, even though he doesn’t plan on being here that long. He needs help to formulate his escape plan, for lack of a better term, but there’s no one around he can ask. And he needs to find out more about Hydra’s whereabouts.

.

Outside in the waiting room Steve mindlessly flips through a lifestyle magazine, enjoying the sound and feel of the pages turning more than the articles themselves. He knows he could probably leave, and that Bucky can handle himself…most of the time. Having to help his friend down to the medical floor makes him hesitate.

It’s at least two hours before Bucky comes out from behind the locked double doors. Steve immediately drops the magazine and stands up, stepping out to come up on his friend’s side. It doesn’t escape his notice that Bucky’s hand is clenched in his pants pocket or that his eyes drill holes through the air in front of them.

“You look like you’re doing better,” Steve prompts, though he gets no response in return.

The elevator ride back to their floor is tense, silence prevailing. Desperate to lighten the mood Steve tries again.

“Did you get some medication to bring home? For your headaches.”

Nothing.

“I hated seeing you in pain like that.”

At this, Bucky turns to him in the elevator, arm muscles clenched like he’s restraining himself from punching Steve.

“Stop trying to fix me,” he growls, “You can’t fix me! My brain is shot and I’m going to get worse so leave me alone and don’t get attached, because I probably won’t be around much longer. Got it?”

“Bucky, I’m sorry. What do you mean?” Steve pleads.

“Stop. Just stop.” The elevator door opens and Steve steps out onto their floor. “Who do I see about talking to someone?”

“A therapist?” Steve takes the following silence as confirmation. “I’ll ask Tony, he’ll tell you.”

The doors slide shut and Bucky disappears to another floor without another word, leaving Steve stranded in a sea of confusion.

.

Bucky stops talking to Steve after that. In fact, he stops talking to anyone, other than his therapist presumably. Although embarrassed by Bucky’s outburst, Steve continues to make himself accessible. He often sits in the living room which Bucky has to pass through on his way in and out of his room. At first, he tried to talk to Bucky, apologize or ask about his well-being, but all he ever received in return has been flashes of eyes, so now he just sits silently, sketching or reading. They crossed paths twice in the gym but stayed on opposite sides.

Steve watches Bucky leave for and come back from his appointments. He always seems a little worse off when he comes back, but then better in the days following. Mostly though, Bucky stays in his room behind locked doors. Steve doesn’t know what else to do, and he’s so _tired._

He wakes one night to Bucky screaming himself awake, and it about kills him to not do anything.

.

As soon as he left Steve on their floor, Bucky went to Tony’s personal lab to ask him about talking to someone, but the lab is cleaned and empty of occupants. This causes another wave of anger to surge over him like an insatiable shark. He kicks a stool over, then feels bad about kicking it, and then even angrier that he feels bad. He turns it upright and stalks out of the room.

In the following days, weeks, Bucky takes to reading the news. He searches online for any hints of Hydra’s whereabouts, plans, or known agents. The longer he finds nothing, the safer he feels, but his acrimonious desire to show them exactly what they did to him and what he’s capable of only grows. Thankfully, his headaches have been manageable with the medication and he can’t really say they’re getting any worse now.

Bucky also asks Jarvis for views of the security camera out front and a bit to his surprise, he’s granted access. He watches it almost obsessively when he’s awake, which is most of the time. They trained him to run on minimal sleep per night, and it comes back easily to him now that he’s focused. He’s not sure what he expects to see lurking outside the tower, but it makes him feel better nevertheless.

During one of these obsessive marathons, he finds himself drifting off. His eyes are bloodshot, and his vision becomes fuzzier by the second. He’s just thinking maybe he should take a break when something or someone, rather, catches his eye. A man has walked into the camera’s shot from outside the plaza. He had a ballcap pulled low over his eyes, but as he continues walking toward the building he pulls it off, looks up into the camera and smiles nervously. It’s not a terribly important man, but Bucky remembers him from the vault. Practically a nobody in Hydra, the equivalent of an unpaid intern who ran around for the scientists who worked for him and Pierce whenever he was there. There wouldn’t be any document of him, nothing that would have incriminated him in the data dump to set the police on his tail. He’d watched them tune their Asset to their mission and never did a damn thing to stop it. The man stares for a few more seconds and then proceeds to walk into the building’s atrium.

Where there was tiredness a moment ago, there is now anger. Churning, bubbling anger that rises until it’s burning him from the inside out. He slams the tablet onto the bed and takes off toward the elevator. Steve isn’t in his usual spot in the sitting room to slow him down or ask him questions for which Bucky is grateful. He’s never been down to the atrium, but he’s also never been told he’s not allowed, so the elevator takes him all the way to the first floor. It lets him out in a spacious corridor and he wastes precious time trying to find his way out. His frustration only adds to his anger, building it into an unstoppable force. By the time he makes it to the sunny atrium, he’s sure he’s lost the man, but finally spots him eyeing a promotional poster set in a stand, twisting his hat between his hands. Bucky takes off toward him, running, ignoring the people who turn to eye him suspiciously. His problem isn’t with them it’s with –

“What the hell are you doing here?” Bucky says heatedly, grabbing the man by his coat.

“You’re causing a scene,” the man says quietly, the slightest hint of panic in his voice. Bucky looks up and sees they have garnered a bit of audience attention. He grabs the man’s arm in bruising tightness and pulls him back outside. To his surprise, the man doesn’t put up any fight. Once away from the crowds, Bucky shoves the man against the wall and slugs him. There’s a bone-crunching sound, almost satisfying in effect and Bucky winds back for another punch, but the man regains his balance and pulls a gun on him.

“I wouldn’t if I were you,” the man says unforcefully.

Bucky holds himself back and takes in the new situation. This guy is young, younger than him, and scared. His hands are shaking, and he clearly hasn’t been trained to use a firearm. Bucky could disarm him before he even blinked, but again he holds himself back. The man glances up to the roof of the building next to them, so that when Bucky follows his gaze he catches the back of a man moving away from the ledge.

“I wouldn’t do that,” he repeats, “they’ve got the building in scope.”

“There’s security systems, you’d never get a bullet through,” Bucky responds.

“Maybe not in the building, but all those people coming in and out.”

Bucky looks at the building again, yes, it would be a good place to set up, the angle was right.

“If that doesn’t convince you, we’ve also got guns trained on your friend Captain America.”

“You can’t get through the building,” Bucky repeats.

“But he’s not in the building, is he? He’s out getting coffee with the Falcon, didn’t he tell you?”

Bucky couldn’t remember-

“So here’s what you’re going to do,” the man continues, gaining confidence. “You’re going to walk across town to this address-“ he pauses and tosses a slightly crumbled slip of paper to the ground “-or else you can let those in the plaza and your friend die.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To you from a very tired chemistry student, thanks for reading the new chapter!


End file.
